LOCAL girl, Mary McCoy, better known from television as Maime McCoy, has just completed filming the Christmas special of Granchester with Robson Green and Yorkshire actor James Norton.

I caught up with her as she was keeping an eye on baby Agnes as well as trying to read two audition scripts.

“I like playing these tough, complicated women,” she said. “In Granchester I play the part of Linda, who is a dancer in the 1950s.

"She has had a tough life, and is a survivor. I am working with the same director as Musketeers and the same crew from DCI Banks."

In the last series of DCI Banks she played Tamsin Richards, the wife of Shaun Dooley’s hardened criminal, Steve. Tamsin had lost both her children, and as Maimie’s daughter Agnes was seven months old at the time, she felt this helped her reach emotional depths as an actor, and she could be raw and honest and truthful about her feelings as a mother.

After her first major role in Victoria Wood’s Loving Miss Hatton in 2012, she got the part of Milady De Winter in the TV series, Musketeers, which made her a household name.

She loved playing this feisty schemer, who was brimming with self-confidence, surviving in a male dominated, and dangerous world.

However all her life, Maimie has had to fight shyness, which is one of the reasons she does what she does. “People assume you are brimming with confidence,” she said, “but I have had to battle it and force myself out of my shell. It is the one thing I would change about myself if I could.”

It all began in Margaret Bradley’s dance school in Great Ayton, where Maimie realised she had an aptitude for dance. Maimie and her brother Eugene both attended classes.

Eugene, also an actor, is now in Groundhog Day at the Old Vic in London, having had successful runs in the West End with Mama Mia, American Psycho and Jersey Boys.

Maimie and her two brothers grew up in what she calls the fascinating and inspiring bubble of the Cleveland Tontine in Staddlebridge, near Northallerton, which her father Eugene, no stranger to TV himself, ran for many years.

She grew up in a creative environment with a family of chefs, artists and musicians.

"There was always a sense of performance there,” she said. “On Sundays I and my brothers would dance to the piano and we would create plays and come out from behind the curtain in the Tontine.

"Not for an audience, just for us. We were almost shut off from normal life, but it prepared us all for the lives we have today.”

Brother Rory now owns two restaurants in London.

Performing at the Edinburgh Festival with the drama group at Stokesley School exposed her to the buzz of theatrical life where she felt swallowed up by the excitement of the festival.

She studied A-level drama at Middlesbrough College and went on to London Metropolitan University to obtain her degree, fighting shyness all the way.

However, this has not held her back, and she finally feels she is doing what she loves as a career which is a huge victory in such a precarious industry.

"Musketeers got me on the TV list,” she said. “The competition is incredible. I am not yet at the stage where my career is certain, but I have been lucky with the jobs I have got, working with the people I have. I especially love working with the crew on set as there is a family atmosphere, and it is great to watch all the attention to detail, especially in period pieces coming together. And also I get to wear exquisite costumes.”

With two auditions coming up, she is looking forward to seeing what will find her next.

Jan Hunter