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Vanity Fair's British star Olivia Cooke had to move to the US to land leading role

Olivia Cooke leads the cast of ITV's forthcoming Vanity Fair  - Mammoth Screen for ITV
Olivia Cooke leads the cast of ITV's forthcoming Vanity Fair - Mammoth Screen for ITV

It is the dream role for any young actress: Becky Sharp, the unscrupulous and irresistible heroine of Vanity Fair.

But Olivia Cooke, who stars in a new television adaptation of Thackeray’s great English novel, believes she would never have got the part had she not moved to the US several years ago to escape snobbery over her northern acccent.

The 24-year-old from Oldham, Greater Manchester, acquired a US agent after being rejected by RADA and won leads in several Hollywood films, including Steven Spielberg’s recent blockbuster, Ready Player One.

Vanity Fair, which will air on ITV next month, is Cooke’s first lead role in a British drama. Speaking at the launch of the series, she said: “I do wonder if I hadn’t gone to America, where my accent didn’t matter and it was just, ‘Oh, what part of London is Manchester in?’ - I don’t know if I’d have been able to come here and then be one of the leads in an ITV drama, and not just seen as ‘maid number three’.”

Cooke said she and Becky Sharp shared a sense of ambition. “I didn’t really want to stay in Oldham all my life, and then I got a bit of a break and just kind of leapt on it and haven’t really stopped since because I’m afraid that everyone’s going to find [me] out and it’s all going to be ripped away from me,” she said.

Olivia Cooke plays the scheming Becky Sharp - Credit: Mammoth Screen for ITV
Olivia Cooke plays the scheming Becky Sharp Credit: Mammoth Screen for ITV

The lavish seven-part adaptation promises a “modern” take on the 19th century novel.

Pop and rock songs are played over the credits, including Madonna’s Material Girl. The servant character, Sambo, has been renamed Sam and the racist attitudes of his employers, Mr and Mrs Sedley, are highlighted.

The director, James Strong, said he had tried to create “a period drama for people who don’t normally like period drama”.

“The pop songs - if they’d had them at the time, they’d be in the book,” he said, adding that it would make the story accessible “for people who might think, ‘Vanity Fair, literary classic - I’m a bit bored.’”

The drama has a contemporary resonance in today’s selfie-obsessed, Instagram culture, according to the screenwriter, Gwyneth Hughes, and a generation that values “the constant showing off about your life rather than living it”.