Which 'miserable' northerners could appear in Mike Leigh's Peterloo film?

Is your face northern? If it is you could become a film star.

A Home Counties casting agency is looking for "miserable and downtrodden… authentic northern faces" to appear as extras in a new Mike Leigh film about the Peterloo Massacre starring Maxine Peake, the Bolton actor who led tributes to the Peterloo victims at a memorial event in 2014.

Dozens of peaceful protesters died and hundreds were injured at the hands of government troops in August 1819 during demonstrations in Manchester calling for parliamentary reform.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

Leigh should know better than to rile northerners: although born in the south (Hertfordshire), the acclaimed director grew up in Salford.

The suggestion there is such a thing as a "northern face" will offend some and amuse others. To make matters worse, the agency – Piece of Cake Casting – is based in Surrey, reports iNews.

So to help out, here is The Week's guide to actors with northern faces – who to cast and who to avoid – for that authentic downtrodden look.

Sean Bean

Whether he's starring in The Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones or playing a troubled Catholic priest in "a deprived northern city" in TV drama Broken, says the Yorkshire Post, Bean's lines are "delivered in that unmistakable gruff south Yorkshire growl". As for his grim, northern face, the newspaper believes his "ravaged features" eloquently express "an entire hinterland of weary empathy, inner turmoil and traumatic past".

Verdict: If the Yorkshire Post likes him, cast him.

Harry Styles

One Direction star Styles has a promising new acting career ahead of him after being cast by Christopher Nolan in his World War II epic Dunkirk. The good news for Piece of Cake Casting is the singer qualifies as northern – he was born in Worcestershire, but raised in Cheshire. However, fans online say Styles's face is "beautiful" and "pretty" rather than downtrodden. "Harry Styles you really making me cry with your beautiful face and gorgeous smile and eyes and lovely heart and soul," tweets @heshrry.

Verdict: He may have northern links, but he doesn't look it. Don't cast him.

Jim Carter

Carter is best known as butler – and Yorkshireman – Mr Carson in the TV series Downton Abbey and played Harry in the gritty comedy Brassed Off, one of the most determinedly northern films of the 1990s (despite most of its cast coming from south of Watford Gap or, in Ewan McGregor's case, north of the border). Speaking to Radio Times last month, Harrogate-born Carter said: "I have avoided people trying to make me into a professional northerner. They all think you're working class whether you are or not. Harrogate is not the pit face."

Verdict: He may not want the job, but cast him.

Cillian Murphy

He may be Irish, but Murphy can pull off a convincing Birmingham accent for five series of Peaky Blinders so could, perhaps, play northern. Manchester and Birmingham are pretty close and Ireland's kind of in the north, isn't it? There's just one problem: so good looking is Murphy that the Daily Telegraph wondered if his "winsome… prettiness" meant he was too "cute" to play the "brute" Tommy Shelby.

Verdict: With those cheekbones? No way.

Pete Postlethwaite

Much missed, Oscar-nominated Postlethwaite died in 2011 at the age of 64 and at the height of his powers. Born and bred in Lancashire – and, like Carter, a star of Brassed Off – he found worldwide fame playing Irishman Giuseppe Conlon in The Name of the Father. If any actor has ever had a northern face, it was Postlethwaite. "Perhaps no actor's career or industry presence has been defined by his face more", wrote The Guardian's Peter Bradshaw in an obituary for the actor. Postlethwait's "rugged features made him every casting director's go-to guy for raw, lived-in truth" while "the stark planes and bulges of his face created a veritable Easter Island statue of authenticity and plainness".

Verdict: Would have been perfect.