ITV Coronation Street: Real life of Jenny Connor actress Sally Ann Matthews - death threats, teen battle and high-flying husband

manchestereveningnews.co.uk:

Sally Ann Matthews became a young star of Coronation Street when she joined the soap at the age of 16.

The Oldham actress was cast in 1986 as Jenny Bradley - the daughter of villain Alan Bradley who was taken in by mother figure Rita Fairclough while her father worked away.

After five years, Sally quit the show in pursuit of other roles, returning briefly in '93, before making a huge comeback in 2015.

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The 51-year-old has previously opened up about the toll her acting career had on her childhood, with her struggling to fit in at school.

She had to balance the pressures of fame with the usual insecurities of being a teenage girl.

And nasty comments from those in showbiz even caused her to develop an eating disorder.

Speaking to the Mirror ahead of her return to the cobbles, she admitted that a remark from a TV critic about how she looked led to a battle with bulimia.

It was an eight-month ordeal that Sally had kept quiet for 20 years.

“When I was in Corrie first time around there was no real celebrity culture. No Twitter, Facebook," she explained.

“In those days, before social media, people were much more focused on the TV critics – who were sort of celebrities themselves."

She recalled a critic made a damaging comment after Jenny got engaged to a French boy, which said 'what would a handsome Frenchman boy like Patric see in a little pudding like Jenny Bradley?'

“For me, that was then eight months of active bulimia and then recovery," she said.

Sally Ann, who married senior barrister Nick Rhodes in 1999, also revealed that her screen committment made it difficult to strike up romantic relationships at the start of her career.

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