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).
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.
[2] McKee appeared in several episodes of the Chris Morris spoof current affairs show, Brass Eye (1997, 2001), as reporter Libby Shuss.
[3] In 2010, she appeared as Goneril in the Donmar Warehouse revival of King Lear, directed by Michael Grandage and starring Derek Jacobi.