Michelle Keegan has always played tough roles. Her acting debut on Coronation Street was as feisty shop worker Tina McIntyre, and today she’s best known as Army medic corporal Georgie Lane in the gritty BBC1 military drama Our Girl.
But if the 30-year-old Mancunian actress takes pride in the fact that she herself comes from a long line of strong northern women, she had no idea how deeply that toughness was embedded in her genes.
It was only during the filming of Who Do You Think You Are?, the television show where genealogists help celebrities trace their roots, that she learned her great-great-grandmother Elizabeth fought for women’s rights alongside suffragette Emmeline Pankhurst.
The 30-year-old Mancunian actress Michelle Keegan takes pride in the fact that she herself comes from a long line of strong northern women
‘I had always wanted to find out more about my ancestry because of my maternal grandmother’s roots in Gibraltar and Italy,’ Keegan explains. ‘So when the programme-makers approached me, I jumped at the chance.
‘We had been filming in Italy and the producers suddenly said we were going back to Manchester. I had no idea why. Then they showed me a 1911 census where my great-great-grandfather John had signed my great-great-grandmother’s occupation as “suffragette”.
‘He was very proud and supportive of her – he also supported women’s right to vote, which was very unusual at the time.
‘I felt incredibly proud and very emotional. I knew my great-grandmother Nora, but no one had ever mentioned this fact about Elizabeth. Elizabeth is also my middle name so I really feel very strongly connected to her.’
When Keegan first saw that an E Pankhurst had been the local registrar for her great-grandmother Nora’s birth certificate, in 1904, she did not immediately recognise the significance of the link.
‘Then one of the producers said, “That’s Emmeline Pankhurst, a leader of the suffragettes.”
‘It turned out that like Emmeline, Elizabeth had been on the militant side of the suffragette movement – the side that rebelled, went on hunger strikes and got the press on their side to make a difference and win the vote. It’s something I had no idea about. It was buried in our family history.
Today Keegan is best known as Army medic corporal Georgie Lane in the gritty BBC1 military drama Our Girl
‘It makes sense, though: my auntie Paula, who was in the Navy and is herself a strong woman, used to describe Elizabeth as a matriarch of the community up here, even as an old woman.
‘She was someone the neighbours went to when they had troubles. She’d listen to their problems. She even looked after everyone’s rent money.
‘I believe in fate and I think there’s a reason I did the show this year. It marks 100 years since women got the vote and for me that was really important. Sadly we don’t have any photographs of Elizabeth, but it makes me proud to think she fought so hard to get the vote for women.’
Beneath her glamorous exterior (she was voted FHM magazine’s sexiest woman in the world in 2015 and has her own clothing line), Keegan also has a core of steel – recently filming the fourth series of Our Girl in the jungles of Malaysia, lugging a 50kg backpack in high humidity and 40C heat.
She trained at Sandhurst to prepare for the role and worked to learn the skills not only of a soldier but also those of a medic.
‘I’m fitter than I’ve ever been,’ she says. But in an age when an actress’s job is no longer limited to the time in front of the cameras, or the red carpet, it has been learning what she should share with the public that has been one of the greatest challenges.
‘I’m very aware of the impact of social media now – it comes with growing up in the public eye,’ she says. ‘I’m very aware of what I say and understand that it can be very influential. All I talk about on those platforms now is work. I keep my private life private.
Keegan’s greatgrandparents with her grandmother as a baby
‘I’m lucky I have such a strong family, and great friends – nine of my girlfriends I’ve known since I was little, and if I’m away we stay constantly in touch. When I get back the first thing we do is all get together. It keeps me grounded.’
Keegan, who appeared in Coronation Street from 2008 to 2014, has also found the constant scrutiny over the health of her marriage to Mark Wright – a former TOWIE star now working in Los Angeles as a TV presenter – something of a trial.
She admits it’s hard being apart (they try to see each other every three weeks) but doesn’t understand the media refusal to accept that her career is also important to her. ‘Why can’t a newly married woman go off and do her job and a husband go off and do his?’ she says.
She believes women today ‘really can have it all’, and her advice to young women in the industry today (and no, she doesn’t want to enter the #MeToo debate) is to grow a thick skin. ‘Don’t let comments on social media affect you. People make their awful comments hiding behind computers and phones. Don’t listen to them.’
Like her great-great-grandmother, Keegan is fiercely supportive of women’s rights.
‘I would definitely describe myself as a feminist,’ she says. ‘I believe in equality for women everywhere. Strong women support each other.’
‘Our Girl’ returns on Tuesday and Keegan’s ‘Who Do You Think You Are?’ episode is on Wednesday, both at 9pm on BBC1