Julie Claire Hesmondhalgh (born 25 February 1970) is an English actress, known for her role as Hayley Cropper in the ITV soap opera Coronation Street between 1998 and 2014.
For this role, she won Best Serial Drama Performance at the 2014 National Television Awards and Best Actress at the 2014 British Soap Awards.
Hesmondhalgh's other regular television roles include Cucumber (2015), Happy Valley (2016), and Broadchurch (2017).
Her stage credits include God Bless the Child at the Royal Court Theatre in London (2014), and Wit at the Royal Exchange, Manchester (2016).
In 2019 Methuen Drama published her Working Diary as part of their Theatre Makers series.
She is, with writer Becx Harrison and visual artist Grant Archer, co-founder of Take Back, a Manchester based theatre collective dedicated to making script in hand rapid responses to social and political events.