1987, as Sally in Coronation Street with her character’s future husband Kevin Webster (Michael Le Vell) and Hilda Ogden (Jean Alexander) Photo: ITV/Shutterstock
I always thought that if I was out in the big wide world, maybe I wouldn’t have the opportunities that I do here. Also, I’ve always had really good storylines. We’ve all had children and we’ve had deaths and marriages. I’ve been on Coronation Street for 36 years, and I don’t regret a minute of it, I absolutely lucked out.
It’s about time people got to know who I am. That’s why I’m doing Dancing on Ice, because I decided I need to prove to myself that I’m OK, I’m doing OK. I wish I’d had the inner strength I have now. I just wish that when I was younger, instead of fretting and worrying about what the future would hold, I’d just enjoyed it. I’ve been so lucky with Corrie and bringing up my children and my husband and… it’s just been such a wonderful time. I’m not a very confident person and that’s held me back a bit. I love people and I love chatting, but the other side of me is quite shy. But I think they were proud of me for doing something out of the ordinary. I didn’t know if they ever thought anything would come of it, to be honest. They’d come and see my shows when they could. So my parents didn’t completely understand but they were happy for me to do what I wanted. He was this wonderful maverick who I just absolutely adored, he completely opened my eyes. And I’d met people who were very interesting, like David Johnson who ran it. Why don’t you do that? But of course I’d had my head turned by this time. They were like, couldn’t you get a job in the factory up the road? You’d get 25 quid a week. So for me to say to them, I’m going to drama school, that was kind of a shock for them. We didn’t know anyone who went into the arts. They were just a struggling working-class family doing various jobs. My parents never knew anybody who was an actor. I think I found my tribe when I went to drama school. I wouldn’t say I was particularly close to anyone in the family. But I wasn’t, I was the timid one in the corner. I wish I’d been a punk, I wish I’d been a goth, like lots of the new people I met at drama school. I just wish my younger self had been more experimental. I had a parting down the middle of my hair, and I wore a pencil skirt and blouse on my first day of drama school. If you met the 16-year-old me you’d think, oh god, she is square.
Oh my god, I was so not a natural-born star. The moment I joined that class, I knew that’s what I wanted to do. I started doing drama classes on Saturday mornings when I was 13, and it became my passion. So I sat in school thinking about all the things I’d do when I left. I hated school and by the time I was 16 I was dying to get out. Having spent the last three decades on the cobbles, she’s trying out a smoother surface to test her inner strength and face up to the crippling fears that held her back in her youth. This month, Dynevor is putting herself to a very different test as a contestant on Dancing on Ice. Here, in her Letter to My Younger Self, she describes how important it was for her to tackle the topic, and how she turned her own diagnosis into a positive. But it was a breast cancer storyline that would prove her biggest challenge, as the actress discovered she was suffering from the disease at the same time as her onscreen namesake. As Sally Metcalfe (formerly Webster) on Coronation Street, her character has endured cheating, divorce, bigamy – and even prison.
#SALLY DYNEVOR TV#
For more than 30 years, Sally Dynevor has been a constant fixture on the nation’s TV screens, raising a family with husband Kevin, sewing knickers in the factory and propping up the bar at the Rovers.