Corrie star's promiscuous teenage years and pregnancy with a man twice her age | Celebrity News | Showbiz & TV

In the iconic Coronation Street, Eileen Grimshaw is known for her no-nonsense attitude and willingness to confront anyone who dares cross her path. From heated arguments with Gail Platt to her appearances on the Rovers Return, Eileen is a force to be reckoned with.

But as Sue Cleaver prepares for her highly anticipated return to the cobbles following a stint on the West End stage, she is showing a more vulnerable side of herself. The actress has spoken of her past anxieties and how they once made her fearful of interacting with her admirers.

Sue has spoken openly about her inner turmoil, saying: “For a few years, if someone approached me in the street, my stomach would tighten and I'd think, 'Oh God, don't come over. Don't come over. Don't come over.'” She admits that being approached by fans filled her with dread, and left her feeling helpless and scared. “When people did that, I was terrified. I thought, '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 very well. My confident exterior was paper thin.”

Delving deeper into her past, Sue reveals how her teenage years were marked by self-doubt and vulnerability, which led to her being taken advantage of by older boyfriends. She recounts significant moments from her youth, including losing her virginity to an older boy, running off with a sailor at 16 to live in a one-bedroom flat, and becoming pregnant at 17 after a relationship with a 35-year-old man.

Sue candidly told the Mirror: “I was looking for love, validation and acceptance in all the wrong places and my first sexual encounters were with someone four or five years older than me. Nowadays that would be simply unthinkable but back then it wasn't. It was nobody's fault and my parents, who were fantastic, only ever tried to do their best for me but like many teenagers I was lost. Nowadays there is an awareness of mental health but when I was that age we had no concept of it and when I look back I was very unhappy. I never want to go through that time again.”

Now 60, Sue has spent a quarter of a century in Coronation Street and is a regular on Loose Women, but struggled to fit in as a teenager. She tells her story for the first time ahead of her new memoir, A Work in Progress, which is a far cry from the feisty Eileen we see on screen.

She says: “There were boyfriends, one-night stands. I told myself, 'Oh, if I do this, they'll love me.' I was always looking for a way to fit in. It was really tragic and it breaks my heart when I think about it now. There's so much shame in my teenage years. I just looked and looked for someone who made me feel OK. Because I didn't know how to be OK myself. So I became really promiscuous.”

Sue's life deteriorated during her school years. She made bad choices, hitchhiked and walked home alone at night. By age 15, she was in a steady relationship but left her boyfriend for his older brother, a marine. At 16, she left school without a qualification and moved to Plymouth to live with him in a one-bedroom flat.

Feeling isolated and bored, she eventually returned to Manchester to live with her parents, but after mingling with older people at a local wine bar, she became pregnant at 17 by a man twice her age.

“This was also someone much older than me who took advantage of that,” Sue recalls. “It's horrifying now to think that at that young age I was in that situation with men who should have known better.”

Realising she wasn't ready for motherhood, Sue decided to have an abortion and kept her ordeal a secret from everyone. She says: “I was completely shaken up. At one point I said to my mum, 'This is what happened, I'm going to hospital that day, can I go and can't we tell dad?' I don't think we ever spoke about it again but that was my decision. I don't think we knew how to do it. My dad never knew. When I look back I think I was so resilient. I just got on with it and dealt with things.”

At the tender age of 17, Sue went to Canada to work as a nanny. After returning to the UK, she pursued her passion for acting at drama school, where she fell in love with her partner for the first time.

Reflecting on the relationship, Sue admits, “He was a really nice guy but he was an adult and I was 23 but emotionally still a kid,” adding, “There were a lot of problems and I think most of them stemmed from the fact that he was established, had a career and a business and what was I contributing financially? Absolutely no bullshit. I vowed at that young age that I would never allow myself not to earn my own money.”

At 26, Sue's life took a romantic turn when she married actor James Quinn and had her son Elliott, now 28. Her career blossomed and she landed roles in hit series such as Dinner Ladies and Band of Gold before landing the iconic role of Eileen Grimshaw, the feisty taxi operator in Coronation Street.

A quarter of a century later, she is one of the soap's most popular characters. Despite suffering great heartache after her first marriage ended, Sue found love again and currently lives in Manchester with her second husband, lighting technician Brian Owen. By sharing her personal journey, Sue hopes to encourage others, especially women, to realise their worth and overcome insecurities.

She draws parallels between her development and the title of her book, seeing herself as an evolving work that gradually embodies the self-confidence of her on-screen persona.

Reflecting on her teenage years, she says, “When I look back at my teenage self, I just want to give her a big hug,” “but that was all part of my journey to becoming the person I am today. My God, I've learned resilience and independence. I don't have all the answers. I'm a work in progress. I'm human and humans are naturally messy and overthink things, but I hope my book helps any woman who is at that stage in their life where they feel invisible and powerless. We're all doing our best, muddling through, and I just want every woman to see for herself how much she has to offer.”