After deciding to leave Coronation Street, actress Sue Cleaver is urging us all to embrace change - however small
As her Corrie character is exiting the soap, actress Sue Cleaver is loudly telling midlife women everywhere not to be written off.
"There is a huge amount of life out there and you have so much to offer the world. Just believe it!" she tells Yours in an exclusive interview. "There is life beyond the menopause!"
Nobody could accuse Sue, 61, of not practising what she’s so passionately preaching. Since deciding to "embrace change, look for new adventures and live fearlessly" as she reached her 60th year, she’s hit the ground running.
Most recently, after 25 years of playing feisty Eileen Grimshaw in Coronation Street, she’s made the brave decision to quit the top soap in Spring and pursue new opportunities. In the entertainment world which isn’t always kind to older women, giving up a role she’s relished as well as a regular salary takes courage.
But Sue sounds confident enough that she’s ready to deal with whatever comes next. "I am the most resilient person in the world. I’ve dealt with everything that’s come my way, and I’ve batted it off," she says.
Sue’s had her fair share to ‘bat off’ too. A few weeks after her birth, she was adopted. Though never a secret and despite being adopted into a ‘wonderful’ family, it wasn’t easy.
"My family never made me feel any different, but I think for a lot of adopted children they carry that with them, that they are other – they are different," she reveals.
"A sense of not belonging was always with me. It’s a very strange thing to grow up and never look into someone’s eyes and see familiarity."
After going off the rails as a teenager and having an abortion at 17, she went on to marry her ex-husband, actor James Quinn, father of her son Elliot, 26.
"It was such a big deal for me when my son was born. I was totally overwhelmed that I had this little being, and that his DNA was running through mine," she admits. It was because of Elliot that Sue stayed so long in Coronation Street despite only intending to stay for a year. The role meant she could ‘be a mum’ and get home for bath time.
Since then, by a strange coincidence, Sue has met her birth mother, Lesley, and a whole new extended family connected to the acting world.
"I was at the Royal Exchange Theatre, and the casting director came into the drama school, and she wanted three or four people for a small part in a play."
"I was chosen alongside Steve Coogan and off we went to rehearsals. We walked in and there was an actor there called Michael Harbour, who was sat next to producer David Threlfall. He said to him, 'Oh my God, she’s the absolute double of my wife when I met her.' And to cut a long story short, his wife was my mother…"
In later life, Sue, who has admitted in the past to being an over thinker, has also trained as a therapist and thrown herself into tackling new challenges.
As well as quitting alcohol, joining a gym and managing to shed three stone in weight, she’s faced her fear of snakes on I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here in 2022 and returned to the stage as Mother Superior in Sister Act. Sue has also published her inspiring memoir ‘A Work In Progress.’
"These few years have probably been my happiest decade," adds Sue, who is now married to lighting technician Brian Owen, who she met on the set of Corrie.
"No matter what you do in life, we all get to that point where society tells us we’re at the end. I hear empty nesters say, 'That’s it, my work is done now,' but you can recreate yourself, and be brave," she urges.
Clearly with her therapist hat on, Sue is acutely aware how not all women can face challenges the size of the ones she’s faced and change their lives so drastically. Nevertheless, she believes wholeheartedly that everyone can at least try.
"People don’t have courage - it’s a muscle, and like everything else, you exercise it. Stop giving yourself a hard time because you are unique and fantastic. Use the Internet to research what it is you want to do or make that phone call."
"You don’t have to do big things, or write books, but I think the biggest thing is to do things that bring you joy.."