She won the 1997 BAFTA TV Award for Best Actress for Our Friends in the North (1996), and earned subsequent nominations for The Lost Prince (2003) and The Street (2007).
[2][3] McKee was born in Peterlee, County Durham, in 1964, the daughter of a coal miner,[1] and grew up there and in nearby Easington and Sunderland.
[1] Seeing a poster in a shoe-shop window for a new youth drama group, McKee and her friends decided to attend, initially not seriously but later becoming enthusiastic.
[4] McKee appeared in several episodes of the Chris Morris spoof current affairs show, Brass Eye (1997, 2001), as reporter Libby Shuss.
[5] In 2010, she appeared as Goneril in the Donmar Warehouse revival of King Lear, directed by Michael Grandage and starring Derek Jacobi.