Actor Anne Reid has said she was pigeonholed into working class roles by casting directors after appearing on Coronation Street.
The 90-year-old starred as Ken Barlow’s wife Valerie on the ITV soap, making her debut in 1961 and exiting the programme a decade later after her character was electrocuted by a hairdryer.
Reid said she was desperate to leave the programme due to being “so frustrated” with the bleak material, telling The Guardian she “didn’t get a laugh in nine years”.
The Newcastle-born star of The Mother, who was privately educated at a boarding school in Wales and took elocution lessons to lose her Geordie accent, said her stint on the soap altered how she was perceived.
“Honey, have you ever met a casting director?” she asked. “Once you've done Coronation Street, you’re working class. I do think that hangs about.”
Reid added that she didn’t know how Ken star William Roache had been able to stand being on the soap for 65 years.
“It suits some people, but it doesn’t suit me,” she said.
Following Coronation Street, Reid landed roles in Casualty, Peak Practice and Midsomer Murders.
Her landmark role came in 2003 when, aged 68, she starred in Hanif Kureishi's graphic drama The Mother. It followed a northern grandmother who seduces her daughter's lover, played by a 35-year-old pre-James Bond Daniel Craig.
The Mother changed critical and industry perceptions of Reid overnight, although the film wasn't to everybody's taste.
“Some people have said to me that they didn't like it, that they couldn't watch an older woman getting into bed with this younger man,” she told The Independent in 2014.
“They'll watch Clint Eastwood getting into bed with a 20-year-old any time. Nobody questions that.”
Reid received a Bafta film nod for Best Actress in a Leading Role for the part and was made an MBE in the Birthday Honours list in 2010.
She also received a TV Bafta best actress nomination for the 2023 true crime drama The Sixth Commandment, which explored the deaths of Ann Moore-Martin and Peter Farquhar at the hands of a conman. The BBC series also starred Timothy Spall.
