Tracy Shaw

Tracy Shaw (born 28 July 1973 in Belper, Derbyshire) is a British actress.

She is best known for her role as hairdresser Maxine Peacock (formerly Maxine Heavey) in British soap opera "Coronation Street" during the 1990s and early 2000s.

Career

Shaw was born into the hotel and pub trade, at the time when her parents ran the Talbot Hotel in Belper, Derbyshire. She attended St. Benedict's School in Derbyshire, and went to the Arden School of Theatre in Manchester in 1990, where she got a degree in theatre studies.

Her best known work at present is hairdresser Maxine Peacock in the long-running, popular British soap opera "Coronation Street" which is set and filmed in Manchester, England.However,Shaw came into conflict with the show's bosses after they tried to cut her pay by 20,000 pounds a year and she bowed out from her famous roll as a result. Shaws's character met a tragic and unfortunate end in the episode screened on 13 January 2003, when she was murdered by Richard Hillman (played by Brian Capron).

She has also appeared in numerous ITV dramas. In 2003 Shaw appeared as Sally in the stage play "The Blue Room", starring alongside Jason Connery.

She also had a short lived pop career in 1998, releasing two singles under the PWL label, "Riding High" (#82) and "Happening all over again" (#46).

Personal life

In May 1996 she was presented with the Rear of the Year, title. She had a series of high-profile romances, including engagement to Darren Day, which led to an array of media stories of cocaine addiction which were ultimately proven to be false.

She married Robert Ashworth in June 2001, but a series of early problems occurred including a row on a return flight from the Caribbean having been filming ITV1's "Wish You Were Here". In 2003, her father Karl Shaw was featured in an article in the News of the World, and said that Shaw survived on "three bottles of wine and a packet of crisps a day". He also said that if "she carries on this way it will kill her". She made moves to turn her life around including spending two months in rehab in the United States and leaving her husband. Before this she had set up an eating disorder charity called "The Tracy Shaw Foundation" which helps teenagers combat eating disorders, as she had struggled with anorexia during the 1990s and at one stage her weight plunged below six stone.

In 2002 she appeared nude in the play "The Blue Room", and it was apparent that she had shaved all her pubic hair off, and was totally bald

Her marriage ended in divorce in 2004, and Shaw set up home with and subsequently became engaged to childhood friend and businessman Ashley Poundall, the son of her mother Anne's partner of eight years, Colin. The couple currently live in Caversham, Berkshire and have two sons Louis (born March 2005), and Luca (born September 2006).Fact|date=February 2008 Shaw plans to return to stage or screen when the children are a little older. Tracy's maternal grandfather Edward Duffy hailed from Coatbridge in Scotland and she still has a number of family members living in the area.Fact|date=February 2008

talker

In 2000, alleged stalker Kevin Sedgwick plead guilty to harassing Shaw over a period of five years. He had written a number of letters to her, as well as Coronation Street co-stars Jacqueline Pirie and Jennifer James, and hung around the grounds of Granada Studios in Manchester, put his arms around Miss Shaw, and asked for a kiss. [http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/low/entertainment/871845.stm] Sedgwick plead guilty later that year to multiple acts of gross indecency with children and had suffered from hearing voices in his head. [http://www.fortunecity.com/oasis/seychelles/577/nov11news2000.html]

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