SUE CLEAVER: 'A dinner party chat led me to my birth family'

Sue Cleaver is one of those women who appear to have it all worked out. Best known for her role as Eileen Grimshaw in Coronation Street (a part she has played for almost 25 years), at 61 she’s glamorous and quick-witted, with a huge appetite for life, as confirmed two years ago by her appearing on I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here! ‘Now it’s my time to have adventures,’ she says. ‘Fear is not a good enough excuse.’

Yet as a young woman Cleaver was profoundly unhappy. ‘We didn’t have the vocabulary to describe how I felt but I would say I was depressed. My life felt desperate.’

At ten days old, Cleaver was given up for adoption by her 17-year-old single mother. She was in a ‘handover’ home for a short spell before a young couple called Freda and John Cleaver, together with their five-year-old son Paul, took her home.

Despite then being brought up by ‘very loving’ parents, she always felt an outsider, partly because her mother had advised her not to tell other children she was adopted. ‘Mum did it to protect me, as she knew other kids could be horrible, but it left me with feelings of shame,’ she says. ‘I do think most adopted people carry a sense of otherness, of something missing, and perhaps you carry that sense of being unwanted.’ It was all exacerbated by the fact that her parents (both boarding-school teachers) moved from school to school. For five years she lived in the grounds of Gordonstoun, where Prince Andrew was a pupil and where her dog once bit the visiting Queen’s chauffeur: ‘The Queen wound her window down and said, “Did he just bite him?” She seemed to find it funny.’

Cleaver became increasingly troubled, losing her virginity aged 14 and becoming promiscuous. Leaving school aged 16 without qualifications, she fell in and out of jobs before getting pregnant by a 35 year old and having a termination. She went to Canada to work as a nanny six weeks later, aged 17, hating the job but experiencing an epiphany after seeing a friend’s amateur play. ‘I thought, “This is shockingly bad. I could do this better. That’s what I’ll do – go home and go to drama school.” Mum thought it was just another madcap idea, but I did it.’

While in Canada, Cleaver also visited a psychic. ‘I don’t even believe in any of that, but she said, “You’ll find your birth mother and you won’t even have to look for her.” I still have the tape recording.’

She thought little more of the encounter, came home and won a place at the Manchester Metropolitan School of Theatre. In her second year, aged 23, she got a tiny part in the play Oedipus at Manchester’s Royal Exchange. ‘I couldn’t have known but that would rock my entire world,’ she says.

During rehearsals she became friendly with Michael N Harbour, an actor who was 41. ‘I had no idea Michael was saying to the stage manager, “My god, Sue’s the absolute double of my wife when I met her, aged 18.” Once, at a party, he started taking the mickey out of my [northern] accent. I said, “Actually, I’ve cultivated this – I’m not from round here.” He asked where I was born.

I said, “Barnet [North London].” He started staring at my hands. I thought, “This is weird.”

‘Then he asked me what my date of birth was. I told him and carried on talking to someone else. Unbeknownst to me he’d gone to a phone box. He rang his wife and said, “I’ve found her.”’ By sheer chance, Cleaver, who relates all of this in her new memoir A Work in Progress, had befriended the husband of her birth mother, Lesley Sizer Grieve, an actress. Five years after giving Cleaver up, Grieve married Harbour and had two daughters, Kate and Emma, with him.

When Harbour told Grieve of his discovery, she was shaken and told him to let things be, as Cleaver might not have even known she was adopted. A couple of nights later, Cleaver, Harbour and another cast member, Leonard, went for dinner. Cleaver started telling Leonard about being adopted, adding she’d never wanted to find her birth mother. 

‘It felt disloyal to my parents and I never wanted to hurt them. Plus, I’d heard stories of people who’d traced their parents and their mother was a prostitute or they’d been turned away on the doorstep.’ Harbour became so agitated that Cleaver joked to Leonard: ‘Maybe he’s my dad.’ At the end of the meal, Harbour told her they had to talk. ‘He drove me to my flat and told me I’d been born Claire and he was married to my [birth] mother. I was so shocked, so confused, just full of adrenaline, not knowing what to do.’

Soon after, Cleaver arranged to meet her birth mother, Grieve, at a hotel. ‘Michael came up in the lift with me and said, “Right, you’re on your own now.” I walked terrified down the corridor. It was like the scene in the film Poltergeist where the more I walked, the further away the door seemed to be. Lesley opened the door and we hugged, without saying a word. That night is a blur, but I saw her again the next day.’

For a while, she says, ‘It was weird between us. Neither of us knew quite how to deal with it – it was like falling in love. We wanted to be on the phone to each other all the time. Everyone else was like, “Isn’t this amazing?” But at a certain point it became too much.’ Cleaver felt shaken at her life taking this sudden new path, and for Grieve the reunion – while happy – revived painful memories. In the summer that year, Cleaver went on holiday to Cornwall with Grieve and her family, but invented an excuse to leave early. Again it was that otherness – she felt so different to her birth family.

For about six months Grieve and Cleaver didn’t see each other. ‘We both needed space. It had been such a whirlwind. We were such an amazing story that Michael would regale friends about it at dinner parties. To us it was like, “Hang on, there are two human beings in this!” But then we drifted back on our own terms and from then we had a wonderful relationship.’

Cleaver stayed close to Grieve until she died aged 74, in 2020. She’s also good friends with her half-sisters, who are both actresses. But the discovery hasn’t lessened her relationship with her parents or her brother Paul. ‘Lesley never felt like my mum – I’ve only ever had one mum [Freda] and she was so warm and generous. There was no jealousy; she welcomed Lesley with open arms and told her she could visit any time. She took all my baby pictures out of the album to send to her. When Lesley and Michael visited my parents at home, they set up a slideshow of me as a baby – it was probably too much for Lesley!’

Still, Cleaver enjoyed deducing which parts of her came from which of her ‘families’. ‘The theatrics are definitely down to my birth family and my emotional side,’ she tells me. ‘But my “nurture” side is practical and I’m down-to-earth like my parents.’

In May 2000, Cleaver won the part of Eileen Grimshaw in Coronation Street, watched by 12 million people an episode at its peak. She enjoyed that rare thing: a regular acting job, which meant that her son Elliott, now 28, with her ex-husband, actor James Quinn, grew up in the same Manchester home, with none of the childhood moves she’d experienced.

But finding her birth mother wasn’t the magic cure for Cleaver’s angst, and she continued to be plagued by self-doubt. She found fame challenging and hated being recognised in public. ‘Once I was walking with elephants in [Botswana’s] Okavango Delta and a ranger raised his gun and called, “Hello, Eileen.’’ I handled that kind of thing badly. The thought of people wanting to get to know me as Sue freaked me out because I always felt lacking.’

She became so fascinated by human psychology that in 2015, she qualified as a psychotherapist, fitting the training around her acting job. It was for her own satisfaction, she’s never practised.

Yet today Cleaver has a more confident view on life. She has remarried (Corrie lighting technician Brian Owen), while Elliott has left home to work designing 3D images for video games. Now she wants to share her experiences with other women. ‘I’ve learnt to listen to my inner wisdom,’ she says. ‘For so long I thought I was broken and weak. Writing the book made me see how resilient I am.’

A Work in Progress by Sue Cleaver will be published by Bloomsbury this Thursday, £20. To pre-order a copy for £17 until 6 October, go to mailshop.co.uk/books or call 020 3176 2937. Free UK delivery on orders over £25