Sue Cleaver says she was ‘lost’ as a teenager as she candidly reflected on her early relationships and the impact they had on her views about financial independence
Renowned for her no-nonsense portrayal of Eileen Grimshaw on the cobbles of Coronation Street, where shes’ seen tussling with Gail Platt and holding her own in the Rovers Return, it’s hard to believe that Sue Cleaver, who plays the formidable character, has been harbouring secret anxieties.
As Sue gears up for a return to Weatherfield following her stint on the theatre scene this summer, she’s shared some revealing insights into her off-screen life, admitting she was once too scared to engage with fans because of deep-seated insecurities.
Sue told the Mirror: “For quite a few years, if somebody came up to me in the street, the inside of my stomach muscles would tense up and I’d be thinking: ‘Oh God, don’t come over. Don’t come over. Don’t come over. It absolutely terrified me when people did. I’d be thinking: ‘I’ve got nothing to offer you. I don’t know what to say. I don’t know what to do.’ It was fear, pure and simple. I don’t think I handled it well at all. My confident exterior was paper-thin.”
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Delving into her past, Sue has spoken about the struggles she faced during her teenage years which contributed to her fears. The actress has revealed a history of being manipulated by older partners, recounting how she lost her virginity to an older lad, fled with a sailor to live in a bedsit at 16, and by 17 found herself pregnant after connecting with a 35-year-old man.
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“I looked for love and validation and acceptance in all the wrong places and my first sexual encounters were with somebody who was four or five years older than me,” Sue said. “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. Nowadays there is awareness around mental health, but when I was that age, we had no concept of it and when I look back, I was very unhappy. I’d never want to relive that time again.”
At 60, Sue has spent a quarter of a century on Coronation Street and is now also a regular panellist on the lunchtime chat show Loose Women, but as a teenager she found herself struggling to fit in. She’s been sharing her story for the first time ahead of the release of her candid and at times heartbreaking new memoir A Work in Progress.
And it’s a far cry from the feisty Eileen we see on 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 admits. “It was tragic really and it breaks my heart to think about it now. There’s so much shame wrapped up in my teenage years. I was just searching and searching for someone to make me feel okay. Because I didn’t know how to be okay myself. So, I became really promiscuous.”
Sue’s life took a turn for the worse during her school years, making poor decisions such as hitchhiking and walking home alone at night. By the age of 15, she had a steady boyfriend but left him for his older brother, a Navy sailor. At 16, she dropped out of school without any qualifications and moved to Plymouth to live with him in a bedsit.
Feeling isolated and bored, she eventually returned to Manchester to live with her parents. However, after mingling with an older crowd at a local wine bar, she found herself pregnant at 17 by a man twice her age.
“Again, that was somebody who was way older than me and took advantage,” Sue recalls. “Now it’s appalling to think of myself at that young age in that situation with men who should know better.”
Realising she wasn’t ready for motherhood, Sue arranged for an abortion, keeping her ordeal a secret from everyone. She shares: “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.”
Sue candidly reflected on her early relationships and the impact they had on her views about financial independence. “He was a really lovely guy but he was a grown-up and although I was 23, emotionally I was still a kid,” she explained.
“There were lots of problems and I think most of them stemmed from the fact that he was established, with a career and business and what did I bring to the table financially? 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.”
After her initial struggles, Sue’s personal life took a positive turn when she met and married actor James Quinn at 26, with whom she had her son Elliott, now 28. Her professional life flourished as well, leading her to land iconic roles in ‘Dinnerladies’ and ‘Band of Gold’, before becoming a household name as Eileen Grimshaw in ‘Coronation Street’.
Despite facing another setback with her first marriage ending in divorce in 2003, Sue found happiness again and is currently living in Manchester with her second husband, lighting technician Brian Owen.
By sharing her journey, Sue hopes to inspire other women to recognize their worth and overcome insecurities. She draws parallels between her own growth and the confidence of her on-screen persona, suggesting that while she may be a work in progress like the title of her book, she’s certainly on the path to self-assurance.
Reflecting on her past, she says: “When I look back at my teenage self, I just want to give her a big hug,” “But it was all part of my journey to becoming who I am now. My God, I learnt resilience and independence. I don’t have all the answers. I am a work in progress. I’m human and humans are naturally messy and will overthink things, but I hope my book will help any woman who is at the stage of their life where they feel invisible and powerless. We’re all doing the best we can, muddling our way through and I just want every woman to see for themselves how much they have to offer.”
