In the role of Deirdre Barlow in the ITV soap Coronation Street, the actor Anne Kirkbride, who has died aged 60, found a job for life – and was happy not to endure the stresses, lack of routine and long periods out of work experienced by most actors.
“I wouldn’t be here if I wanted to perform Shakespeare,” she once said in a rare interview. “I never really wanted to be an actress. This is a nine-to-five job. This is how I earn my money.”
A reluctant star, Kirkbride found fame and press attention difficult to cope with. Away from the Coronation Street studios, she was a quite different person from her on-screen character, leaving behind Deirdre's spectacles and pinnies, wearing contact lenses, shirts and jeans, and having the aura of a much younger person.
She made her debut as Deirdre Hunt in the soap opera in 1972 – with just three lines of dialogue. A year later, she returned, marrying the character Ray Langton (Neville Buswell). But the marriage fell apart and the rest of Kirkbride's Coronation Street career was dominated by Deirdre's rollercoaster marriage to Ken Barlow (William Roache).
In 1983, two years after their wedding, Ken found out that Deirdre was having an affair with Mike Baldwin (Johnny Briggs) and told her to leave. The explosive storyline proved to be the serial’s biggest to date, with unprecedented press coverage.
United
It caught the imagination of the public to the extent that the electronic scoreboard at a midweek Manchester United game informed 56,000 fans of the drama’s resolution: “Deirdre and Ken united again!”
When Ken went astray himself, Deirdre threw him out. The couple divorced and, in 1994, Deirdre married a Moroccan waiter, Samir Rachid (Al Nedjari), but their happiness was shortlived. He died in hospital after being attacked by thugs.
In another storyline that captured viewers’ imagination. Deirdre was duped by Jon Lindsay (Owen Aaronovitch), who falsely claimed to be an airline pilot and moved into an expensive house with her though he already had a wife and children. She found herself framed for credit card and mortgage fraud, and was sent to prison in 1998. She was released after several weeks when another of the conman’s victims came forward. In real life, the storyline had been mentioned by the prime minister and galvanised the public to launch a Free the Weatherfield One campaign. Eventually, Deirdre and Ken were reunited and remarried in 2005.
Kirkbride was born in Oldham, Lancashire, the daughter of Jack, a cartoonist, and his wife, Enid (née Kirkham). As a child, she showed a desire to perform. Aged seven, she disappeared while on holiday in Wales and was found giving a sermon, in a convincing Welsh accent, in an empty chapel. When she was 11, Kirkbride joined the Saddleworth Junior Players, then the Oldham Rep Junior Theatregoers’ Club.
On leaving grammar school in 1970, she became an assistant stage manager with Oldham repertory theatre and advanced to acting roles.She made her first screen appearance in a play made by the Manchester-based Granada Television. In Another Sunday and Sweet F.A. (1972), written by Jack Rosenthal and directed by Michael Apted, she was seen in hotpants and a yellow knitted hat as a footballer's girlfriend cheering on his Sunday league team from the touchline.
Joint award
This led to an audition for the pilot episode of a new Granada series. Instead, she was offered the bit part of Deirdre Hunt in
Coronation Street
. Confirmation that she had become a staple of the soap came in 1984, when she,
William Roache
and Briggs jointly won a Pye Television award for their performances in the love triangle storyline.
In 1993, a year after marrying the actor David Beckett – who had played Dave Barton, Deirdre's handyman boyfriend, in Coronation Street – Kirkbride was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma.
She lost most of her hair as a result of chemotherapy, returned to the Granada set with a wig after six months and was finally given the all-clear in 1998.
However, as she put this illness behind her she was diagnosed with clinical depression. In a documentary in 2012 marking her 40 years in the soap she said: “I realised that all my life I’d probably suffered from a very mild form of depression.” Prescribed anti-depressants, she immediately felt better.
Kilbride also enjoyed photography and painting, and exhibitions of her paintings were staged at galleries in Didsbury, Manchester, where she lived.
She is survived by her husband.