Attention Coro fans: May contain spoilers!
Veteran soap star Claire King has been through more than her fair share of tough times.
Her marriage broke up after her husband cheated on her with a workmate, and she was blackmailed by a former business partner who secretly filmed her snorting cocaine. She spends her spare time caring for her disabled parents, has a potentially crippling auto-immune disease herself, and another condition robbed her of the chance to ever be a mum.
In her forties, she ended up broke after offers of work dried up, so she resorted to having a facelift, and she was sacked from a job because of controversial comments she made about euthanasia.
Just to be clear, these are not storylines written for the soap opera characters she’s played, but her own fraught life.
Claire has said goodbye to her feisty Coronation Street character Erica, pictured with her co-star Ben Price but Kiwi fans will still see her on screen for two more years.
Yet despite everything she has gone through, Claire is able to stay upbeat and positive.
“I’m happier than I have been for a long time and I am optimistic about the future,” she says. “You have to stay bubbly – if you’re down in the dumps, people would rather not have you around.”
Claire (54) currently plays shop assistant Erica Holroyd in Coronation Street, but found fame as conniving man-eater Kim Tate in Emmerdale. Kim was voted one of Britain’s most popular soap characters in a poll and during her 10 years on the show, got some of the juiciest storylines.
But after Claire left Emmerdale in 2000 to play prison governess Karen Betts in the drama series Bad Girls, her personal life took a traumatic turn that would not have been out of place on a TV soap.
She discovered her husband, actor Peter Amory (52), who played her wheelchair-bound stepson Chris Tate on Emmerdale, was having an affair with colleague Samantha Giles (46), who played barmaid Bernice Blackstock.
Claire with her ex husband Peter, who played her son on Emmerdale.
Claire says she and Peter had grown apart and the fact she was working in London while he was based in Yorkshire didn’t help. “I had a feeling something was going on,” she reveals.
“Samantha’s husband wrote me a letter and told me. When we broke up, I put on a brave face but inside I was dying.”
Not long afterwards, she bumped into Samantha in the ladies’ toilets at an awards ceremony.
“She wouldn’t speak to me,” remembers Claire. “When she saw I was there, she literally ran into the cubicle. She probably thought I was going to hit her, but I’m not that type of woman. I did win best actress that night, so it wasn’t too bad.”
Their paths crossed again at a funeral a few years later, and this time Samantha did speak to Claire.
“She said, ‘Look, I’m really sorry.’ After all these years, it’s water under the bridge. But we are friends.”
Samantha Giles, her former co-star, was once Peter’s mistress.
Claire also managed to stay friends with Peter, even though she was devastated by his infidelity.
Shortly after the break-up, and still coming to terms with the end of her 10-year marriage, the racehorse-owning actress joined forces with a man called Benjamin Mack in a scheme to set up a syndicate betting on horse races. One night, he visited her at her home, and over several bottles of wine, got her talking about what had gone wrong with Peter.
Claire later recalled, “He was being very sympathetic and I poured my heart out to him.
“I had a lot to drink and got upset. There was cocaine on the table… he encouraged me to chop it up. I am no angel and have taken cocaine very, very occasionally over the years, especially in my youth. But I never got addicted.”
Claire took some of the cocaine and ended up in bed with Benjamin. But she regretted it instantly and later rebuffed his further advances.
She says several months later, when she made it clear she did not want a relationship with him, he sent her a video he’d secretly filmed on his phone of her taking the drugs. He said he wouldn’t make it public if she gave him $20,000.
“I was sick. I was crying and shaking. I was thinking, ‘What the hell are my parents and family going to think?’ I felt like I was in a horror film.”
Claire paid Benjamin $3000 but he kept badgering her for the rest. Eventually, she went public herself, revealing to a newspaper that she was being blackmailed. “I’m deeply ashamed,” she said at the time. “I was so, so stupid and I am angry with myself.”
Her parents were shocked and upset, but forgave her, says Claire. She is close to both her parents and along with her brother Piers, has helped to look after them since she was a child. Dad John (77) has multiple sclerosis and is bedridden most of the time, and her mum Angela (77) has rheumatoid arthritis and severe back problems.
Claire also has rheumatoid arthritis. She has had joints removed and plates put in her fingers. Meanwhile, severe fibroids meant she had to have a hysterectomy, so was unable to have children, and she’s also suffered from tinnitus and facial paralysis.
“I’m falling to bits, really,” she jokes.
To make matters worse, while she was dealing with these health and personal issues, the offers of work stopped coming in – something she put down
to her age and her looks.
“The phone just stopped ringing,” she tells.
“It was as sudden as a tap being turned off. I was devastated. You hear of actresses who hit a certain age and the work dries up. I never thought it would happen to me. I finally accepted I wasn’t getting any jobs because people were shocked I had got older. When you’re known for sexy roles, you can get trapped by it, and with all the stress I suddenly looked older than I was.”
Claire ended up so broke that she often couldn’t afford to put petrol in her car and, convinced her looks were letting her down, decided to do something about it. She had a mini-facelift, which involved a stitch being put in each cheek to pull up the lower half of the face.
“I looked like me again,” she says. “The next audition I went for, Casualty, I got. Then I got a film and two other dramas. Suddenly things were taking off again.”
Claire in Bad Girls
Then, of course, there was the role in Coronation Street. But life hasn’t been all smooth sailing since – just a couple of months ago, she lost a contract as a spokesperson for an energy company after an interview in which she was meant to discuss their energy-saving campaign turned to the topic of assisted dying.
Claire made headlines when she admitted that her own ill health and caring for her parents had made her think seriously about whether she would ever choose euthanasia.
“I do worry about when I’m older and becoming a burden on people around me,” she revealed. “I can understand why people choose assisted dying – and it’s getting to the point where I would consider it myself.”
As a result of what she said, she was sacked by the energy company. She agrees that her comments were inappropriately timed but said she just wanted people to “hear her side”.
As Kim on Emmerdale
That incident came shortly before her character Erica left Coronation Street in the UK (we’ll still get to see her on our screens in New Zealand for almost two years). Claire had decided it was time to move on.
“I was only meant to stay for six weeks initially, so for Erica to be so popular that she stayed for three years was a real compliment to me as an actress,” she tells.
Emmerdale fans are hoping her move opens a door for her to be written back into that show as the notorious Kim.
Claire hasn’t spoken about the rumours that she might return to the show, but says she does have work lined up. “I’m ready for another challenge,” she says. “Watch this space.”
