Madeleine Mantock is Lorelei

Madeleine Mantock plays the young and beautiful, Lorelei - but her character stirs up a lot of trouble.

"Lorelei is a character that represents fun and youth and the idea of something shiny and new that you can have all of these great experiences with. Lorelei enters the story when her best friend, Dante, encourages her to get a new kitchen as a reward to herself for working so hard. The person who comes to fix her kitchen is Wes (James Murray). The two of them strike up a really good friendship; they share a similar sense of humour and get on really well and their relationship stems from there. She is unaware that he is married."

Playing a personal trainer in the series, Madeleine talks to us about her own fitness regime:

"When I am in LA I exercise all of the time. When I feel like I need to achieve something in the day I will do a circuit boxing class, which is really fun. I also do Pilates and other classes and I tend to do all of this in one day, I will box then get a smoothie, then do Pilates and then go to a dance class, so it is very full-on but it’s mostly because I have nothing else to do.

"When I leave LA for a job I don’t do any exercise, so I am a bit all or nothing. During the filming for Age Before Beauty there was a moment when Lorelei challenges Wes to this exercise circuit, and that was really fun because I felt like I still had an overhang of fitness there, I have the muscle memory and I haven’t turned into a potato yet."

Moving from LA to Manchester was a big change for Madeleine but one she was very happy to make:

"I have been working away from home a lot recently so it has been so nice to be back home and able to have crumpets and enjoy all of the other silly little things you miss about England when you are away. I also have a few friends from drama school who live in Manchester so it was really lovely to get the chance to catch up with them. I love Manchester, it is such a wonderful city."

Madeleine even welcomed the Northern English weather.

"One of my best days on this drama was when Polly (Walker) and I filmed a scene in the park. It was unbelievably windy so we couldn’t hear each other. We were sat on a bench and we could see each other’s lips moving but we couldn’t actually hear anything. Obviously you know the scene so you know what you are supposed to say next, but it was literally a matter of waiting to see her lips stop moving before I spoke. I am so used to filming on a set or a stage so I am not used to the elements getting in the way. But it was really funny and so much fun to film."

Madeleine reveals why she thinks people will enjoy Age Before Beauty:

"There isn’t anything like this already out there! I love a gritty drama as much as the next person but there is an element of our show that is fun, shiny and bright, that I believe people will welcome. You still get the drama, tears and the heartfelt moments but there is also this wonderful humour to the show. While at the core this is a drama about people’s lives, relationships and the impact people’s actions have on others."

A Foreword by Debbie Horsfield

"In 2001 I worked with Laura Mackie and Sally Haynes on a series called Cutting It, which was set in the world of hairdressing. Fifteen years on, Laura, Sally and I were discussing what had changed in the world of makeovers and personal grooming, and we agreed that women - and increasingly, men - had become much more obsessed with looking youthful. The anti-ageing side of the beauty industry had exploded in those intervening years so we thought it would be interesting to explore the impact on three generations of one family by using it as the backdrop to our saga.

Age Before Beauty explores the expectations we have, and the 'rules' we create about what people are 'allowed' to do at any given age. It was inspired by a feature I read about what women were and weren’t 'allowed' to wear, according to their age and shape! [No bikinis after 35. No long hair over 40. No mini-skirts after 25. No leather trousers ever unless you’re 6ft tall and a size 8!] It made me wonder what other rules are there out there, which people feel they have to abide by? Especially in a world of selfies and social media where so many people are keen to pass judgement and so many people feel they have much to live up to.

So Age Before Beauty became less about specific anti-ageing beauty treatments and much more about characters deciding to confound age-related expectations - for better or worse - at whatever age they fancied! I say for better or worse because one of the things we explore is the midlife crisis. We ask the question: Is it automatically better to be young? Does age always envy youth? Is beauty always the thing to aim for? Or does youth and beauty ever have anything to learn from age and maturity?

We’re looking at three generations of one family and exploring how they deal with the demands of youth, age and everything in between. And how they confound expectations. So for instance, the worst-behaved generation is actually the oldest and the most sexualised and overdressed is actually a nine year-old!

Family has always played a large role in my work and I enjoy exploring the dynamics between siblings and different generations. In Age Before Beauty we have three generations, aged from nine to late 60s, and we’ve been fortunate enough to assemble an extraordinary cast. The drama is set in my home town of Manchester. Obviously I’m biased but I feel there are particular qualities about the city (its vibrant multiculturalism and ever-changing faces) and its inhabitants (their resilience, irreverence, inventiveness, humour) - which make for particularly entertaining drama.

It’s been fun to return to the world of contemporary Manchester after being immersed in 18th century Cornwall for the past few years, but in truth I’ve loved both worlds and would happily return to either and both!"

Related Programme Information

• Episode one
• Episode two