Julie Hesmondhalgh was "nervous" about her career after leaving 'Coronation Street'.

Julie Hesmondhalgh felt nervous to leave Coronation Street

Julie Hesmondhalgh felt nervous to leave Coronation Street

The 53-year-old actress played the role of knicker stitcher Hayley Cropper on the ITV1 soap opera from 1998 until 2014 but admitted that one of her "big issues" with deciding to leave was that she was "kept young" by her dramatic storylines that aren't often found elsewhere.

Speaking on the 'Actors’ Benevolent Fund' podcast, she said: "One of the big issues for me in my list of pros and cons about leaving was that 'Coronation Street' is a really, really amazing place to grow old. Especially as a woman. There aren’t very many other genres, I suppose where though you’re still getting fabulous storylines in your 80s and 90s.

"You know, you’re still having love affairs and divorces and being held at gunpoint in the sweet shop. It’s an amazing thing, and also it keeps you young. And so that really was the main thing that made me nervous about leaving."

As Hayley Cropper, Julie played the first transsexual character ever on a British soap opera and her storylines included striking up a relationship with Roy Cropper (David Neilson) - whom she later married as soon as it became legal to do so -, discovering her long-lost son Christian (Andrew Turner), whom she had fathered whilst living as Harold, and buying baby Amy from Tracy Barlow (Kate Ford) for £25,000.

The character was killed off in January 2014 when she decided to take her own life amid a battle with pancreatic cancer.

Since leaving the show, Julie has appeared alongside Dawn French in 'The Trouble with Maggie Cole', and starred as Alan Bates wife Suzanne Sercombe in 'Mr Bates Vs the Post Office' amongst a host of other dramas and explained that programmes like 'Happy Valley - which starred Julie's fellow former 'Corrie' star Sarah Lancashire as an "every woman" police offer - have "done wonders" in terms of giving women in the industry opportunities.

She added: "You know, things like 'Happy Valley' have done wonders for middle aged women, ordinary looking middle aged women. Sarah Lancashire is just like every woman and I don’t know, a single person who wasn’t captivated by that performance and saw something of themselves in it.

“You know, [a] sort of curmudgeonly ordinary woman dealing with these extraordinary circumstances. And, I think that has helped when something like that is so popular, and it's captured the national imagination in that way. I think that the commissioners then think, 'Oh, we want more of this!'"

Tagged in