ITV Coronation Street actor went bankrupt after earning £100,000 on show at 16

Coronation Street star has been in the public eye since he was 16 and has had his fair share of financial ups and downs - including earning a huge amount before he was 20

Ryan Thomas, best known for his role as Jason Grimshaw on ITV's Coronation Street from 2000 to 2016, has opened up about his financial struggles during and after his time on the soap. The actor, who also had a few reality TV appearances post-Corrie, admitted in a recent interview that he lacked a good financial role model growing up.

Ryan won Celebrity Big Brother in 2018, appeared on Celebrity MasterChef and Celebrity Antiques Road Trip in 2022 and won this year’s Dancing on Ice.

Now at 40, Ryan reflected on his money management skills when he was just 16. Speaking to The Times, he said: "I had money from a very young age - and for a 16-year-old I had a hell of a lot of money. So, I did have a credit card growing up and it caused me a few problems."

He confessed that he can't recall how much he neglected his finances, but he remembers always being late with repayments, leading to a debt he wasn't aware of. Young Ryan would even foot the bill for his friends' nights out, resulting in him spending more than he should have.

Delving deeper into his financial woes, Ryan revealed that he filed for bankruptcy in 2013 due to an unpaid tax bill, which he attributes to sheer negligence.

However, he doesn't regret his past mistakes, saying: "But I don't regret any of the things that happened to me because I actually feel like they've been a real blessing. I've learnt so much and I don't think to myself, "Oh, I did this, I did that," because I'm the sort of guy who takes a day at a time anyway."

"I don't really think about too much into the future and during that time I was earning anyway, so it wasn't like I was jobless. I just lost everything and started again," he explained.

Last week, Ryan Thomas was beaming with pride as he stood alongside his daughter to mark her sixteenth birthday bash a celebration where her mother and Corrie star seemed notably missing.

Former soap couple Ryan and Tina O'Brien, who is famed for her portrayal of Sarah-Louise Platt on Coronation Street since 1999, sparked up a romantic relationship off-screen from 2003 to 2009. They shared the joy of becoming parents to their daughter, Scarlett, in 2008.