With characteristic self-deprecation, Sue Cleaver has called her book A Work In Progress. (Image: Getty)
With characteristic self-deprecation, Coronation Street star Sue Cleaver has called her book A Work In Progress. In it she admits that despite her self-assured exterior, she has suffered from anxiety and a sense of being a misfit.
However, her mental health has been transformed by years of psychotherapy.
So feeling more at peace than ever before, she has felt able to share her life-changing discoveries in a book that blends memoir with supportive self-help.
“I’ve always been a very private person,” she says from her home in Manchester.
“So telling my own story meant tense bum cheeks at times – ‘Oh my God, I’m putting all this out there’.
“But the change in me has been so huge that I wanted to share that. So I had to go back and reveal my challenges.
“It was hard to do at times but I found it really cathartic and really enjoyed it.”
Sue, 61, grew up aware she had been given up for adoption as a baby. She is at pains to stress that her loving adoptive parents always did everything they could to provide a stable and happy upbringing.
But she was always troubled by a sense that she didn’t know who she was.
This feeling of not fitting in with her family was exacerbated by her father’s job as a teacher, which involved several moves and daunting new starts.
Years of teenage rebellion saw Sue leave school without any qualifications and leaving home after trading one boyfriend for his older brother and moving in with him.
She said: “The hardest thing to talk about was my teen years. That was the most painful time in my life. I have great sympathy and love for that lost girl and I feel very sad for her. But I’ve left that in the past. I have bad memories and I choose not to engage with those memories.”
Her “eureka” moment came when she was working as a nanny in Canada.
She went to see a friend’s play, and though it was “atrocious” she just knew at that moment she had to become an actor.
She won a place at a theatre school in Manchester and while it was no magic bullet, she felt she was finally beginning to find her place in the world.
She landed a small role in a production of Oedipus at the Royal Exchange where she and actor Michael Harbour became firm friends.
Incredibly, during a chat about Sue’s date of birth it dawned on Michael that his wife Lesley was Sue’s birth mother.
The women’s reunion was a success, if overwhelming for both.
Though Lesley felt more like a cousin than a parent, Sue says: “I’m so grateful we found one another.”
At 26, Sue met actor James Quinn. They married and had a son Elliott in 1998. Sue says she parented him as she wished she had been parented herself.
“My son never left the house without me looking in his eyes, holding his face and saying,’I love you.You are awesome’.
“He seems to think I did OK, which is great.We’re very close.”
Sue landed the role of Eileen Grimshaw on back in 2000. She describes the character as “everything I wasn’t, but that I pretended to be”.
Sue’s interest in the human mind saw her spend three years studying to be a psychotherapist: “I’m fascinated by the human experience. I think that’s what made me become an actor.”
But she abandoned her studies when she came across the Three Principles of psychology, first articulated in the 1970s.
She explains: “The crux of it is about understanding that every feeling and emotion is created by your own thoughts, and the realisation that those thoughts are not facts.Thoughts come and thoughts go.
“Just notice them and accept them. Choose which thoughts you hang on to and get back into the present moment. That’s the key to creating happier experiences.”
This discovery gave her a fresh perspective on her sense of herself as an outsider.
She said: “It’s a made-up story in my head that I’ve habitually learned – that I didn’t belong.That I wasn’t enough.
“Nobody told me that, nobody treated me that way. I created that story in my head then lived with it for years.” She says it has been a “lifetime project” to try to shake off that narrative. “I got on with life but it was my secret monologue – and what a stupid monologue to have.”
Sue also realised the only reason she had repeatedly declined offers to take part in I’m A Celebrity was because she was scared. “So I did it in 2022 and loved it. This decade is about living fearlessly.”
She also urges women to resist the invisibility that can accompany ageing: “Stand up for yourself.
Believe in yourself. Find what brings you joy.”
To order A Work In Progress, Sue Cleaver, (Bloomsbury, £20) visit www.expressbookshop.com or call 020 3176 3832. Free UK P&P on online orders over £25.