At 16, my main passion was acting. And I was getting to do it. I got a role in Coronation Streetthree months after I turned 16. I was a pretty early starter, in the nicest sense. I’d always wanted to be an actor. And by then I’d done some TV work on Yorkshire Television, I’d done kids TV including a series by Kay Mellor [Just Us]. So I had done my GCSEs, which didn’t go as well as I’d expected – I think I believed everyone when they said they weren’t revising, then they all did really well – gone to college and had started acting.
I was living at home with my mum and stepdad on a council estate in Cottingley, Leeds. And we knew what the people on the new estate thought of us. But there were bigger differences about me than the fact we didn’t have much money. I was one of the only brown
