Coronation Street’s Sue Cleaver on unhappy teenage years and shock meeting with bio family

Eileen Grimshaw is regarded as a straightforward matriarch who fiercely defends her family and close friends on Coronation Street.

Sue Cleaver, who portrays Eileen in real life, has two biological families: her adoptive family and her biological family.

and revealed how ecstatic she was when she met her biological mother on Good Morning Britain on Thursday. Sue attended drama school, and Oedipus auditions were taking place at the Royal Exchange in Manchester.

She revealed: ‘ I met an actor called Michael Harper who met me and said “She’s the double of my wife”.

To make matters worse, my accent was questioned at a party when I said, “Well, I am not from the North, I was born in Barnet.”

The next thing I know is that he called her and said, “I’ve found her. He had left the party.” He was married to my birth mother. ‘

Sue continued:” It is interesting because growing up, we didn’t go to the theatre or anything, but when I met my birth mother, their whole family were in the business. “

Sue’s birth mother claimed she “always felt” that she would be reunited with Sue, according to GMB co-host Richard Madeley.

The star added:” I have my wonderful family and now I have birth family. “

The Mirror previously received the heartfelt story from the star. The chance discovery of her birth family, however, may seem like an out-of-control coincidence, but Sue’s life story wasn’t even remotely outrageous.

Although she had a loving family and her adoptive parents made every effort possible for her, she had a difficult teenage years. And this made her vulnerable. Indeed, Sue was so full of self-doubt, she found herself being taken advantage of by older boyfriends. She ran away with a sailor and lived in a bedsit when she was 16 and became pregnant after falling for a 35-year-old man, and she lost her virginity to an older boy.

Sue says, “I looked for love, validation, and acceptance in every way, and my first sexual encounters were with someone who was four or five years older than me.” Nowadays that would just be unthinkable, but it wasn’t at the time. It was no-one’s fault and my parents, who were fantastic, only ever tried to do their best for me, but like a lot of teenagers I was lost. Although there is still awareness of mental health, when I was that age, we had no idea, and now I look back, I was very unhappy. I’d never want to re-live that time again. “

Sue, who is now a regular panelist on the lunchtime chat show Loose Women, has worked at Coronation Street for a quarter of a century as a young woman, but as a teenager she found herself struggling to fit in. Before the release of her heartfelt and honest new memoir, A Work in Progress, she has been sharing her story for the first time. It is a far cry from the ferocious Eileen depicted on the screen.

” There were boyfriends, one-night stands. I convinced myself that ‘ Oh, if I do this, they will love me’. I was always searching for a way to belong, “she says”. Really, it was tragic, and now that I’m thinking about it, it hurts. There’s so much shame wrapped up in my teenage years. I was just looking for someone to comfort me. Because I didn’t know how to be okay myself. So, I became really promiscuous. “

At school, Sue went off the rails and began making poor decisions, with no intention of driving home alone or returning home in the dark. By 15 she had a steady boyfriend, but left him for his older brother, a sailor in the Navy. At 16 she quit school with no qualifications, and moved to Plymouth to live with him in a bedsit.

She eventually relocated back to Manchester to live with her parents after being lonely and bored. However, she ended up pregnant by a 35-year-old man after hanging out with an older crowd at a nearby wine bar. Again, that was somebody who was way older than me and took advantage, “Sue says”. Now that I’m a young adult with men who should know better, it’s horrifying to think of myself.

Knowing she wouldn’t be able to cope with a baby, Sue booked herself in for an abortion, without telling a soul what she was going through. She says:” I was in absolute turmoil. I eventually told my Mum – I said: ‘ This has happened, I’m going to the hospital on this date, can I have a lift and can we not tell Dad’. I don’t think we ever spoke about it again, but that was my choice. I don’t think we knew how to. My dad never knew. I look back and think I was so resilient. I just got on and I dealt with stuff. “

At 17 Sue moved to Canada to work as a nanny. She met her first serious boyfriend in drama school when she returned to Britain, where she fell in love with him. Although I was 23 years old, he was a really lovely man, but he was a grown-up. “Sue says” was a mature man who, emotionally, was still a child. What did I bring to the table financially and the fact that he had a career and business, and there were many issues, and I believe the majority of them were caused by this? Absolutely jack s**t. It made me vow, even at that young age, that I would never, ever allow myself not to earn my own money. “

At 26, Sue met and married actor James Quinn and the couple had son Elliott, 28. She later had successful TV roles in shows like Dinnerladies and Band of Gold. Then, in 2000, she was hired by Coronation Street’s feisty cab switchboard operator Eileen Grimshaw. She is one of the show’s most well-known stars a quarter of a century later.

The actress, who now lives in Manchester with her second husband, lighting designer Brian Owen, had a bad time falling in love again when their first marriage ended in divorce in 2003. She thinks that by talking about her past, she can better understand who she really is. She’s hoping that her book will inspire other women to remember their worth and overcome their insecurities because, like her book title, she’s still a work in progress but is gradually morphing into her alter ego in the confidence stakes.

” When I look back at my teenage self, I just want to give her a big hug, “she reflects”. But it was all a part of my journey to becoming who I am today. My God, I learnt resilience and independence. I don’t have all the answers. I am a work in progress. I’m human, and people are naturally messy and will overthink things, so I hope my book will be a resource for women who are feeling powerless and invisible. Every woman deserves to see for herself how much they have to offer, and we’re all working our way through.

Bloomsbury Publishing has published Sue Cleaver’s A Work in Progress in hardback.

Source: Mirror