DID YOU KNOW? Hayley Atwell

Best-known as Peggy Carter in Marvel’s Captain America films, Hayley is starring in new US legal series Conviction (9pm, Sky Living). Here are a few facts about her life and career…

She was named after actress Hayley Mills: Hayley, now 34, grew up in London, and always wanted to be an actress. A good student, she was head girl, and went to Guildhall School of Music and Drama after her A levels. She was cast in her first film – Woody Allen’s Cassandra’s Dream – within months of graduating, at the age of 25.

Her father is a shaman: Part Native American, her father, Grant, is a massage therapist, photographer and occasional shaman, part of the New Age community in California, where he lives. When he went with Hayley to a screening of her BBC drama The Line Of Beauty, he ended up giving the director a massage.

Her nickname at school was ‘Hayley Fatwell’: ‘I had the only-child syndrome of loving my independence to the point of being a bit socially retarded.’ While doing A levels, she was called ‘Hulk Hayley’, after she got into wrestling.

She often goes make-up free: ‘One of the best lessons I ever learnt was from a girlfriend of mine who pointed out that if you wear make-up all the time, you lose the ability to wow when you do.’ Her character Peggy Carter in Captain America was so popular, she was given her own series: ‘I think people wanted to see more of her. And so the Marvel herd did something about it!’. Agent Carter was cancelled after season two, but the same network cast Hayley in Conviction.