In 2002, Hawkins played Samantha in Mike Leigh's film "All or Nothing". This was the first of three films that Hawkins and Leigh worked on together, the second of which was the 2004 film "Vera Drake". She appeared as Slasher in the 2004 action film "Layer Cake." Her first major television role came in 2005, when she played Susan Trinder in the BAFTA-nominated BBC drama "Fingersmith", an adaptation of Sarah Waters' novel of the same name, in which she co-starred with Imelda Staunton. She then starred in another BBC adaptation, Patrick Hamilton's "Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky". Between 2003 and 2005 Hawkins appeared in four episodes of the BBC comedy series "Little Britain". Hawkins acted in David Hare's adaptation of Federico García Lorca's play "The House of Bernarda Alba" in 2005, at Royal National Theatre.