Corrie legend Sue Cleaver opens up on her 'promiscuous' teenage years as she reveals secret abortion

Sue Cleaver had an abortion in her teenage years.

The 60-year-old actress has opened up about her life and career in the new memoir 'Work in Progress' and spent her younger days in search of "validation and acceptance" but ended up pregnant after falling for an older man, choosing only to inform her mother.

She said: "There were boyfriends, one-night stands. I convinced myself that ‘Oh, if I do this, they will love me’. I was always searching for a way to belong. “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. I was just searching and searching for someone to make me feel okay.

"Because I didn’t know how to be okay myself. So, I became really promiscuous.

"I was in absolute turmoil. I eventually told my mum – I said: ‘This has happened, I’m going to the hospital on this date, can I have a lift and can we not tell Dad’. I don’t think we ever spoke about it again, but that was my choice.

"I don’t think we knew how to. My dad never knew. I look back and think I was so resilient. I just got on and I dealt with stuff."

Meanwhile, the 'Loose Women' panellist - who is now married to lighting technician Brian Owen but has son Elliot, 26, with ex-husband James Quinn - is known for her long-running role as matriarch Eileen Grimshaw in the ITV soap opera 'Coronation Street', and up until getting the role in 2000 had played small parts in Kay Mellor's 'Band of Gold' and 'dinnerladies' opposite Victoria Wood.

But she admitted that joining the soap left her "absolutely terrified" of being recognised in public and wouldn't know what to say to any fans if they approached her.

She said: "For quite a few years, if somebody came up to me in the street, the inside of my stomach muscles would tense up and I’d be thinking: ‘Oh God, don’t come over. Don’t come over. Don’t come over.'

"It absolutely terrified me when people did. I’d be thinking: ‘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 well at all. My confident exterior was paper-thin."