Coronation Street favourite Katherine Kelly ’s award-winning career was almost ended by a freak accident that injured her so badly doctors said she might need a wheelchair.
The actress, who played Rovers barmaid Becky McDonald for six years, has spoken for the first time about a fall that damaged her spine and left her in so much pain she stopped acting.
And she credits a physiotherapist for finally helping her to heal and get back to the career she loves.
National Television Award winner Katherine, 43, says: “If I hadn’t found him, I would have had an operation. I had a conversation with one professional about a wheelchair.”
The future Gentleman Jack star was 19 when she fell through a door at a friend’s house and hit her coccyx, the bone at the base of the spine, on the corner of a table.
Since she only suffered a dead leg at the time, Katherine, then a drama student, thought nothing more of the injury – until it flared up again on a camping holiday a few months later with her family.
She says: “I couldn’t get out of the sleeping bag. I’d forgotten the previous incident.”
Back at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts in London – where Yorkshire-born Katherine was studying – the debilitating pain kept coming back.
Katherine says: “I couldn’t get out of bed. My flatmate would have to lift me out of bed.
“I went to the GP and got sent to a physio. Back at home, I went to an osteopath. That seemed to work for a while but then became problematic.”
She struggled on for 18 months, trying to keep going and to make her dreams of being an actor come true.
Katherine says: “My mum would post her migraine tablets down to me. I was in massive pain. I would time taking the tablets with physical lessons.
“I’m going from physio to osteopath. Everyone I saw said it was something different.”
But the immense pain started to severely impact her studies.
She says: “I couldn’t predict when it would hit. It was almost like I was lying, as one day I was in pain and the next I wasn’t. I knew I’d have to leave drama school.”
It was a massive blow – and her career could have ended right then. But, luckily, RADA paid for her to see a physiotherapist.
And Katherine credits that physio, Kevin Ludlow, with completely turning her life around.
She says: “To be in that pain every single day and not be able to walk... It was nerve damage. What made it worse was it had gone untreated for 18 months.
The base of my spine had twisted to compensate because I’d been taking so many painkillers.”
She saw Kevin three times a week. “He believed in rehab exercises. Long-term, he said I’d have to do yoga or pilates and he was right.
“I haven’t had any problems for 10 years now.”
Katherine spoke about her injury publicly for the first time on podcast Three Little Words after keeping it under wraps throughout her career.
She says: “You’re asked a lot when you’re a slim actress – especially back when I was in Corrie – ‘What’s your diet? What’s your secret?’
“I used to really stay away from those questions because the truth was I’d come to exercise because it was going to keep me well.”
In the heartfelt podcast chat, the actress opened up to comedian John Bishop, 56, and actor Tony Pitts. She and Line of Duty actor Tony, 60, are said to have been dating for a few months.
The couple reportedly went public at the Dancing with Heroes ball at the Landmark Hotel in London last month, when Katherine was seen with her arms around Tony at their table.
She worked with the star, who played Archie Brooks on Emmerdale for a decade until 1993, on a short film called Affection in 2019.
The actress split from her husband, digital analyst Ryan Clark, in April 2020. The pair met in 2011 and married in Las Vegas two years later.
When she got together with her ex, Katherine was playing Rovers barmaid Becky in Coronation Street – a role she held from 2006 to 2012.
Fans loved her rollercoaster relationship with husband Steve (Simon Gregson), and Becky became one of the soap’s most loved characters before she escaped to Barbados with new lover Danny in her final episode.
Playing Becky won Katherine an NTA for best serial drama performance and two British Soap Awards, proving a springboard for work on top shows like Happy Valley, playing DI Jodie Shackleton alongside Sarah Lancashire, and as another detective, DI Karen Renton, in Liar.
The actress says: “I was lucky Becky McDonald was very different to me.
“When I arrived [on Coronation Street] in 2006 it was time for the ladette. It was a lot of fun. She got drunk a lot and threw a few fists.”
Following her exit from the famous cobbles, Katherine transitioned to the stage, treading the boards at London’s National Theatre.
“When I left Corrie after five years, I went to the National and they were like ‘Where have you been?’,” she says.
“Those worlds didn’t collide. I wanted to blast through [soap snobbery] – I defy that.”
She’s gone on to have leading roles in hit ITV series Mr Selfridge, Liar, Innocent and Cheat, as well as playing Elizabeth in Sally Wainwright’s historical BBC drama Gentleman Jack.
Growing up in a village outside Barnsley, budding thespian Katherine didn’t have many opportunities. She remembers: “For a one hour singing lesson it would take me four hours. There was no way into [acting] where I was. There were no opportunities from the middle of Yorkshire.
“[The Ken Loach film] Kes was made in Barnsley 10 years before I was born. I used to look at the TV and I didn’t know how you got on there.”
The impressive resume she has built since proves how firmly she made up ground after that fatefall fall as a teenage hopeful almost ended her career before it started.
Although recently Katherine has taken a step back to spend more time with her daughters from her marriage to Ryan, Orla, seven, and Rose, five.
The star says: “I do less now as I equally love being a mum. I don’t want to hand them over for someone else to raise them. I’ve definitely stepped back and I’m enjoying that.”
But she insists she hasn’t left acting behind: “I’m not jaded by it, I don’t do the moaning. I could never let it go – it’s unthinkable.”
