WHEN Maxine Peake was a girl growing up in Bolton, she didn't spend her time playing with dolls and dreaming of being a princess.

"I was always more of a Buttons, I think. I was a tomboy, but a misguided tomboy. I was really soft, I couldn't climb trees."

So it comes as something of a surprise that the former Westhoughton High School pupil with the boyish bob and fondness for jeans and Birkenstocks should be playing belle of the ball, Cinderella, in a new one-off comedy-drama for BBC One.

But this is no ordinary version of the fairytale, as it's the second of the Beeb's series of updates, which sees the famous fable transferred to a modern day university, with Maxine playing Cindy Mellor, a cleaner in the paleoanthropology department.

"It's basically the outline of the fairytale we know," says the 33-year-old.

"A girl down on her luck meets a charming young man and they live happily ever after. Only it's set in the world of academia and I play a cleaner who's obsessed with paleoanthropology. She meets James Nesbitt's character, Professor H.Mike Prince, who is the authority on the subject, although she's not convinced by his theories."

Throw in some not especially ugly sisters, a godmother figure and a pumpkin (kind of) and you've got a mash up of Cinderella, Good Will Hunting and Educating Rita.

"I auditioned for one of the ugly sisters," said Maxine, who last year took on the challenging role of Myra Hindley in TV's See No Evil: The Moors Murders. "I didn't hear anything and I was actually at the Baftas and bumped into Jimmy Nesbitt who I'd never met before. He said: You're playing Cinderella' and I thought, Oh, he's had a lot to drink!'.

"I thought if they're mad enough to cast me as Cinderella, I'm not going to turn it down!"

In fact, Maxine's sly beauty and no-nonsense charm make her the perfect wannabe princess, though the former Dinnerladies star had to spend most of her time in yet another unflattering outfit.

"It was a tabard, but I've done tabards before," she said.

In fact, it sounds like tabards are her outfit of choice, because just like the hospital cleaner she played to acclaim in Shameless, Maxine is something of a real life char lady.

"I love cleaning," she said. "I've got an addiction to bleach as well. It's a bit of a joke among my friends who say, You stink of bleach!' "I think if I ever became rich and could afford a maid, I'd have to clean before she came in."

Rubber gloves and a smock may not be the outfit of choice for most actresses, but for down-to-earth Maxine, it's that any day over getting dolled up in a posh frock.

She said: "I always feel like a man in drag. It's nice to dress up, but I'm one of those who says, Yeah, done it now, can I go and stick my jeans on and enjoy myself?' The shoes are lost somewhere, the handbag's somewhere else..."

It's an attitude that has stayed with her since her youth as a self-confessed "chunky kid" who even spent some time playing in the Wigan Ladies amateur rugby league.

She said: "I always think I must have been misadvised somehow about attracting the opposite sex.

"I thought if you dress like them and hang around with them . . . I did lots of that to get boyfriends and obviously, I had lots of male friends who thought I was great and told me about all the girls they really fancied, like my best friend!"

She is currently single, but has admitted that she only got her first boyfriend at the age of 23 and soon after joined WeightWatchers, on the advice of mentor Victoria Wood, where she dropped from 15 stone to her now svelte form.

"It's back to auditioning now," she grimaces when the question of her future comes up. Despite her talent and success, she seems to think that she still has to prove something to casting agents. "Constantly," she says when asked how often she blows screen tests, adding: "I'm getting worse at it as I get older. I get up and move about and they can't hear me over the noise of my script."

If auditioners do question her ability, she admits she is not very good at standing up for herself. "I'm better at standing up for other people," she says. "I've gone soft in my old age. There's moments, if someone's really taking the Michael, then I will. But I'm much better at charging in on other people's behalf."

Still, she has plenty on the go. Bike Squad - "about cops on push bikes" - is starting on ITV1 and she stars opposite Neil Morrissey in the British movie, Clubbed. However, unlike her Shameless co-star James McAvoy, don't expect to see her heading to Hollywood.

"I'm not that ambitious," she explains. "I couldn't see myself over there - unless Frasier was still going and Daphne needed a sister!"

  • Cinderella is on BBC One on Thursday, January 17 at 9pm.

Star lady facts

Name: Maxine Peake
Age: 33
Significant Other: Single
Career High: Her breakout role in Shameless
Career Low: A part in bland Michelle Collins drama, Sunburn
Famous For: Slimming down after starring in Dinnerladies, and her strong Bolton accent Words Of Wisdom: "It was the first time I auditioned for RADA. I thought I'd try as everywhere else had said no.

"I remember my mum saying that I was either very thick-skinned or very stupid." - On getting into the celebrated drama school aged 21 after multiple rejections elsewhere.