Coronation Street star Sue Cleaver has opened up about the moment she got knocked out cold during filming.
The star, who has also appeared on Loose Women and I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here, has played Eileen Grimshaw on the ITV soap for the past 24 years, during which time she's faced plenty of tough storylines. Including one that sent her to hospital.
Writing in her new memoir, A Work in Progress, Cleaver shared that she was once knocked out by co-star Judy Holt (who played Lesley Kershaw) while filming a heated scene.
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"We had a stunt advisor and had spent some time practising our manoeuvres but unfortunately during a take Judy got a bit carried away and an upward punch made contact with my face," she shared (via The Mirror).
"I don’t remember anything else but apparently I dropped like a stone, out cold. They used the sound of the real punch [in the final edit], so it wasn’t all for nothing!” Cleaver recalled.
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Cleaver was rushed to hospital following the incident, and, thankfully, made a full recovery.
Elsewhere in the memoir, Cleaver shared that she had gone through “turmoil” in her teenage years after “looking for love, validation and acceptance” from others.
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“It was no-one’s fault. My parents, who were fantastic, only ever tried to do their best for me, but like a lot of teenagers I was lost,” she recalled “Nowadays there is awareness around mental health, but when I was that age, we had no concept of it.
“When I look back, I was very unhappy. I’d never want to relive that time again. 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," she said.
“I was just searching and searching for someone to make me feel okay, because I didn’t know how to be okay [with] myself. So, I became really promiscuous. Now it’s appalling to think of myself at that young age in that situation with men who should have known better. I was in absolute turmoil.”
Coronation Street airs on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays at 8pm on ITV1 and streams on ITVX.
Read more Coronation Street spoilers on our dedicated homepage
If you've been affected by the issues raised in this story, organisations who can offer support include the NHS, Samaritans on 116 123 or Mind on 0300 123 3393. Readers in the US are encouraged to visit mentalhealth.gov.
