Coronation Street star Sue Cleaver's turmoil after teen pregnancy with man twice her age

Sue Cleaver, known for her tough, no-nonsense role as Eileen Grimshaw on Coronation Street, has revealed the painful truth behind her teenage years, which were marred by a secret pregnancy with a man twice her age.

As Sue gears up for her return to Coronation Street after spending the summer performing in the West End, the actress has admitted that she was taken advantage of as a teen by older boyfriends, recalling running off with a sailor at 16 and living in a bedsit at 17. She then found herself pregnant after falling for a 35-year-old man

Knowing she wouldn’t be able to cope with a baby, Sue booked herself in for an abortion, without telling anyone what she was going through.

She says as reported by The Mirror: “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.”

The actress faced heartbreak once more when her first marriage ended in divorce, but she now resides in Manchester with her second husband, lighting technician Brian Owen.

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.

“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. “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 also admitted she was once too scared to even speak to her fans due to her own self-doubt.

“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,’” Sue confesses.

“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.”