Sue Cleaver was born in Barnet, Hertfordshire in 1963. She studied at the Manchester Metropolitan School of Theatre, then landed roles in A Touch of Frost, drama series Band of Gold and the film Girls’ Night alongside Julie Walters and Brenda Blethyn. After landing a role in the Johnny Depp and Cate Blanchett film The Man Who Cried, she was cast as Eileen Grimshaw in Coronation Street, a role she has held for 25 years. She is a trained psychotherapist. Last year, she published her first book, A Work In Progress.

As she prepares to depart the Cobbles this year for new pastures, Sue Cleaver spoke to Big Issue for her Letter to My Younger Self, looking back on being a rebel, accidentally finding her birth mother and getting the best night’s sleep in the jungle.

I had a very rebellious streak when I was 16 because I had massive attachment disorder, which I think came from being adopted. I had a very lovely family, they are wonderful. I love them very much. But being adopted threw up an identity crisis for me, and I was always struggling with that, searching for love in the wrong places. I was just a mixed-up kid who didn’t have any idea of what they wanted to do with their life. It was a hard time and I made bad mistakes. And I think what I was doing, in hindsight, though I didn’t realise it at the time, I was always running to the next thing, to the next adventure, to the next boyfriend. And a lot later in life I realised that all that time I wasn’t running to anything, I was running away from myself. That was the mistake I made in my teens and my 20s.

I had a ridiculous stint with a fella down in Plymouth. I moved down there the day I turned 16. I mean, nowadays, it would just be incomprehensible. So I didn’t even take my O levels. I just lost my way. I did come home, and eventually I moved to Canada as a nanny just to go away and make a fresh start. And that was where I discovered acting and drama. And I literally had this lightbulb moment. I went to see a friend in a show, in an amateur dramatics show, and I was in the audience, and I just went, oh my god, this isn’t very good. I could do this. This is what I should be doing. And that’s when I came home. I went back to college. I took my O levels and A levels. My parents were thinking, oh my god. What hare-brained scheme has she found now? I went to drama school, and that’s when everything changed for me. I found my passion.

2000: Sue Cleaver moving into Coronation Street as Eileen Grimshaw with sons Jason (Ryan Thomas) and Todd (Bruno Langley)Image: ITV/Shutterstock
If you met the 16-year-old Sue I think you’d see Sue was always up for a laugh. She would have been the class clown. You know, on the outside I was fine. It was a secret world I was living. No one would have known what I was feeling. I was very, very good at acting at that stage, showing what I needed to show but keeping this secret pain inside of me. It took me years to sort myself out. I went to therapy, then I trained as a psychotherapist. I did a lot of work. I had that typical adopted child syndrome – growing up not knowing anyone who looks like you, not noticing any traits in yourself that the rest of the family have. You have a different way of seeing things. When I had my own child, it was like, oh my lord, somebody is there, somebody with the same blood as me. That connection was so important to me.

I found, quite by accident, my birth mother, so I have a relationship with her and my two half-sisters. The way I found her was uncanny. I was in one of my theatre jobs at the Royal Exchange Theatre, and there was an actor in there called Michael. When I walked in on the first day he said, “Gosh, she looks like the spit of my wife when I met her.” And to cut a very long story short, his wife was indeed my mother. I had a great relationship with my mum before she died. We’d all visit, we’d have dinners, we’d stay at each other’s houses. They were at my wedding. So it all went well between us.

Sally Dynevor: ‘It’s about time people got to know who I am’
Angela Griffin: ‘For my first year in Coronation Street I kept my job in Burger King’
The gentrification of EastEnders: How life has changed for people in the real Albert Square
The biggest thing I’d tell myself, and I think humans forget this, is that we believe our thoughts – but thoughts are not facts. We can go through life thinking; there’s something wrong with me. And the reality is, the only thing wrong with you is that you think there is something wrong with you. My biggest issue, I would say, was the anxiety that I lived with, and I’ve lived with for many years. I spent so much time worrying about being anxious. I didn’t realise you don’t have to work hard to get rid of it. In fact, working hard to get rid of it is what keeps anxiety in place, the constant thinking. Now relief comes not from trying to fix anxiety, but from seeing it for what it is, just another thought passing through that you can choose to take notice of or not.

2024: Sue Cleaver appearing as a panellist on Loose Women Image: Ken McKay/ITV/Shutterstock
In terms of my career I have no regrets. I’ve done everything I wanted to do. You know, I followed my heart. I’ve not allowed myself to be held back by fear. You have to step out of your comfort zone for things to happen. You have to take chances and risks. When I started I did quite a lot of theatre, which is my first love. And now I’m leaving Corrie, I really want to go back and do a bit more. I think my first ever TV job was A Touch of Frost. My first ever TV job, doing a scene with David Jason! And then I went on to do a Harry Enfield series, and Dinner Ladies. All very different, but I’ve enjoyed them all.

I remember finding out I had the Corrie job. My son was nearly five, and I’d spent the first five years of his life in London or away from home filming, and I decided I wanted to be at home with him. Then I got a call from Corrie saying, would you be interested in coming in? And I went for the interview. They told me about the part, and it was Eileen [Grimshaw], and I had a chat with a producer. There were a lot of other people there waiting to be seen. I remember coming out and ringing my agent, and saying, I think I’ve got that. And then literally, an hour later, they rang me. And the rest is history. I loved it. It is a family and it is the best place to work.

Now my time at Corrie is coming to an end and it’s time to try other challenges and get out there and live fearlessly. My book is about women empowering themselves. You know, I’m 61 and society wants to diminish women of my age and have us just shuffle off. And I just feel, absolutely not! This is the start of my decade. This is completely for me, with no responsibility for anybody else any more. I’ve still got life to me, and there’s adventures I want to have. I just want to push myself a little bit. So that’s what I’m doing. There is not one way of doing life. There’s so many ways.

I’d always said I’d never do I’m a Celebrity… Then I thought, why am I not doing the jungle? And the only reason I could come up with was because I was scared. I thought, that’s just not a good enough reason not to do something. I’d thought, I’m terrified of snakes. I can’t deal with snakes. And then I thought, hang on a minute, when was I last confronted by a snake? When was the last time it slithered up and wrapped itself around my neck? It never has. So that fear is based on nothing. That’s an illusion. In actual fact, I found out I was actually all right with snakes. I had a really nice time. I was with a good group of people. I loved the camp [Cleaver was a contestant in 2022]. Sleeping in the jungle was the best night’s sleep I’d ever had, with all those jungle sounds.

2022: Sue Cleaver is evicted from camp on I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here! Image: James Gourley/ITV/Shutterstock
I have a great amount of love for my younger self. I didn’t have that when I was young. I just thought I was a failure. I didn’t like myself. It would be a surprise to my younger self to know she does find peace, and she does find her place in the world. She does eventually start to like herself. And she’s learned some incredible lessons on the way. I wish I could have told that girl everything would be OK at 16, because life would have been so much easier.

A Work in Progress by Sue Cleaver is out now (Bloomsbury, £9.99). You can buy it from the Big Issue shop on bookshop.org, which helps to support Big Issue and independent bookshops.

Do you have a story to tell or opinions to share about this? Get in touch and tell us more. Big Issue exists to give homeless and marginalised people the opportunity to earn an income. To support our work buy a copy of the magazine or get the app from the App Store or Google Play.

Never miss an issue

Take advantage of our special subscription offer. Subscribe from just £9.99 and never miss an issue.

Recommended for you
Just Act Normal creator Janice Okoh on class, comedy and the one joke white people won’t get

Poster for Just Act Normal on BBC3

TV

Just Act Normal creator Janice Okoh on class, comedy and the one joke white people won’t get
The Change star Bridget Christie: ‘You’ve got to make a real effort to evolve when you get to 50’

Letter To My Younger Self

The Change star Bridget Christie: ‘You’ve got to make a real effort to evolve when you get to 50’
Doctor Who star Ncuti Gatwa on return to the Tardis: ‘I was pushed in ways I hadn’t been before’

Ncuti Gatwa and Varada Sethu, stars of Doctor Who

Doctor Who

Doctor Who star Ncuti Gatwa on return to the Tardis: ‘I was pushed in ways I hadn’t been before’
How Beyond Paradise places foster care at the heart of primetime detective drama

Martha (Sally Bretton) and Humphrey (Kris Marshall) in Beyond Paradise

TV

How Beyond Paradise places foster care at the heart of primetime detective drama

Most Popular
Renters pay their landlords’ buy-to-let mortgages, so they should get a share of the profits

Renters: A mortgage lender’s window advertising buy-to-let products

1.

Renters pay their landlords’ buy-to-let mortgages, so they should get a share of the profits
Exclusive: Disabled people are ‘set up to fail’ by the DWP in target-driven disability benefits system, whistleblowers reveal

Pound coins on a piece of paper with disability living allowancve

2.

Exclusive: Disabled people are ‘set up to fail’ by the DWP in target-driven disability benefits system, whistleblowers reveal
Cost of living payment 2024: Where to get help now the scheme is over

next dwp cost of living payment 2023

3.

Cost of living payment 2024: Where to get help now the scheme is over
Strike dates 2023: From train drivers to NHS doctors, here are the dates to know

4.

Strike dates 2023: From train drivers to NHS doctors, here are the dates to know