Posted: Sun Jul 22, 2007 10:48 pm Post subject: Corrie - tara chuck
Street's Vera Duckworth quitting
Actress Liz Dawn, who plays Vera Duckworth in Coronation Street, is to leave the soap due to ill health. Ms Dawn, who has played her character for the past 34 years, will leave the ITV show before Christmas. The 68-year-old actress has the lung disease emphysema and, according to the News of the World, has told Granada she is too sick to continue. She said she wanted to "thank everyone" for "the best time of my life" during her years in the popular soap.
Producers would not say how Ms Dawn is to be written out of her £200,000 role, but said she would continue to make guest appearances on the show. Her character's husband Jack, played by Bill Tarmey, will remain in the soap. She said: "It's been an amazing 34 years. I'd like to thank everyone for what has been the best time of my life."
Coronation Street executive producer Kieran Roberts said: "After 34 years as Vera, Liz has taken a decision to relax and enjoy her retirement. We're currently devising storylines for her character's departure for Weatherfield but we would prefer not to reveal details at this moment. We're indebted to her for all she has achieved during her years as Vera Duckworth. She is a star and is loved by ITV. We will always miss this wonderful lady and first-rate actress and we are delighted that she's agreed to return to the soap in the future."
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That's a shame, I reckon she's one of the best characters on tv, not just in soaps.
Liz Dawn exclusive I had an affair, hit the bottle and even felt like suicide.. Corrie's been one amazing journey Beth Neil
06/08/2007
www.mirror.co.uk
She's played one of the nation's best-loved soap characters for more than 30 years. But as Liz Dawn prepares to say goodbye to the cobbles of Coronation Street, we can reveal that she has suffered almost as much drama in her private life as her motormouth alter-ego Vera Duckworth has on screen. Today, Liz, 68, opens her heart about the tragedy, divorce, depression and battles with the booze which have rocked her family. And the mum-of-four, who bows out of Britain's longest-running soap opera at the end of the year, talks candidly about the real-life rags-to-riches story which saw her go from virtual poverty to overnight fame and fortune.
Her success, however, came at a price - and Liz is the first to admit that life in the limelight has taken its toll, even once leaving her feeling suicidal. "It does take over your life," she says. "People don't realise. They think you've had a charmed life. They don't see that you've brought up four children and learnt lines on the train. From where I'm looking at it, my life has been a battle - in my career and in my marriage. Playing Vera has been an amazing journey but has also put me under pressure."
Those pressures almost brought about the collapse of her marriage to second husband Don Ibbotson. The couple separated several times amid blazing rows and accusations of cheating. "It has always been a very volatile marriage," Liz says. "I did have an affair. Of course, I regret what happened and the hurt it caused. I think if Don and I hadn't split up at times we would have ended up killing each other. In the summer of 1984, we split up in the most painful way possible. It was the worst period of my life."
The strain of the separation caused Liz to start drinking heavily and she plunged into a deep depression. She even contemplated suicide. "I tried to find my answers in the bottle," she says. "Drinking is no answer to anything. But at the time a drink or two simply seems to ease the pain and help you through the day. It became serious drinking... to blot out the pressure. A refuge from unhappiness. "Hundreds of times I've gone to work not feeling 100 per cent. Sometimes I've felt suicidal. At times it felt as if the world was closing in on me."
Thankfully Liz and Don, who have three daughters together, were able to put their troubles behind them. Two years ago they celebrated their ruby wedding anniversary. Liz managed to get her drinking back under control and is now closer than ever with Don. She says: "I rely on him for so many things. We can sit and laugh about it now. We get on very, very well. I always think that if a man is bossed, it's because his wife cares a lot about him. Of course I nag him. That's only because I really care about him. I'm very suspicious of men who make a real fuss of their wives. I've never been treated like a lady in my life - and that's how I like it."
Born Sylvia Butterfield on November 8, 1939, in the front room of her parents' council semi, Liz grew up in Leeds, West Yorkshire, the second of five children - her twin brother and sister died soon after birth. Mum Annie worked at a local tailoring factory while dad Albert was a miner. Money was tight and the family would scrimp and save to get by. Liz, who remains fiercely proud of her working class roots, vividly remembers when they moved to an estate next to Poulton Moor Mansion.
Liz says: "I just couldn't take it in that there was this big mansion where all these people lived like they did, and then that my father worked down that big black hole. It was too much for me. I couldn't believe it." She left school at 15 and married miner Walter Bradley three years later. She gave birth to son Graham in 1958 but felt trapped in an unhappy marriage. The following year Liz found the courage to leave Walter and start to rebuild her life. She says: "We just weren't good for each other. I was much too young and inexperienced to get married. The basic problem was we didn't really know each other. I was young and naive and looking for someone to love. We never seemed to have enough money and we couldn't keep up a mortgage. I was still only a kid really and it was a very unhappy time for me. I knew there was nothing between us."
The split left Liz a single mum at the tender age of 20 and virtually penniless. There were desperate, fraught days as she struggled to pay the bills and worried about the future. "It was dreadful," she says. "I was on nerve tablets for ages. I was so depressed, I thought I'd made a mess of everything." Liz found work at the same factory as her mother and would leave Graham in the nursery while she earned their keep. And as time went on she regained her confidence and started to socialise. It was on a night out in the pub that she met electrician Don.
"I was still bruised from my marriage but at last I had found a man who would really look after me," she says. "I was very happy to lean on his broad shoulders." In January 1965, Liz married Don at Leeds Registry Office while seven months pregnant with their daughter Dawn. Now 42, Dawn was soon followed by sisters Anne and Julie, now 40 and 38. Don has brought Graham, now 48, up as his own.
For down-to-earth Liz, family have always come first. "My family is everything to me and, underneath, I would love to have known what it is like to be just an ordinary housewife," she says. "I wanted to have 10 babies, be married to someone with lots of money, do me own dusting and be a happy housewife, but life's not like that, is it?"
These days Liz's whopping Corrie salary has given her and Don a plush three-bedroom flat in Greater Manchester and a holiday home in southern Spain. But the years following their wedding were tough. The family lived in a council house and Liz worked two jobs to help make ends meet. By day she was screwing caps on toothpaste tubes in a factory. By night she was selling wigs. The family muddled through. Until one night Don heard her singing in their local pub and entered the then Sylvia Butterfield in a talent contest at a holiday camp near Scarborough. She won, picked up some club bookings and embarked on a career as a singer.
For the next five years she sang in working men's clubs under the stage name Liz Dawn. "I wanted a name that created a glamorous image but I finished up playing a hard-up housewife with hair like Harpo Marx," she once joked, referring to Vera's trademark perm. Her break into television came after performing in an advert for Cadbury's. This led to several appearances in Play For Today and parts in Crown Court and Z Cars.
In 1974, at the age of 35, Liz was offered a small part in Coronation Street as shameless gossip Vera Duckworth, a warehouse packer at Mike Baldwin's factory. She was terrified to be joining what had already become a British institution. "I would grit my teeth, switch on my most confident smile and stride into action as though I'd just called in from the Royal Shakespeare Company," she says. The character proved such a hit that five years later Street bosses introduced Vera's hen-pecked husband, the eternally bone idle Jack, played by Bill Tarmey. It was a chemistry made in heaven.
But it's a partnership which must now come to an end. Liz's poor health in recent years - a cancer scare prompted her to give up her 30-a-day smoking habit, only to be diagnosed with the incurable lung disease emphysema in 2004 - has forced her to take things easier. And the death of her sister Maisie at the end of last year was yet another cruel reminder of how short life can be. Mum Annie died of bowel cancer in 1975, aged just 57. Liz's dad, a heavy smoker, died of lung cancer at 70. Her mother's death hit Liz hard. "It was such a terrible blow and I don't think I've ever fully recovered from it," she reveals. "I felt as though someone had pushed me from an aeroplane with no parachute."
Charity work has helped kind-hearted Liz deal with the tragedy and she has raised £1million for the Liz Dawn St James's Hospital Breast Cancer Appeal at Jimmy's hospital in her hometown of Leeds. She fully intends to continue her tireless fundraising despite her retirement. But now she's left Weatherfield behind, Liz is most looking forward to spending more time with the family she clearly dotes on. "Being a mother and grandmother is the main priority in life," she says. "If I know they are well and happy that is everything I need."
With extracts from Vera Duckworth: My Story by Liz Dawn and Stafford Hildred.
I nearly keeled over at Palace By SHARON HENDRY
and SARA NATHAN
August 06, 2007
www.thesun.co.uk
Brave Liz Dawn has told how agonising lung disease left her screaming for breath — and on the verge of COLLAPSE at a Buckingham Palace bash. The stricken actress, quitting after more than three decades as Coronation Street favourite Vera Duckworth, was diagnosed with deadly emphysema five years ago. She continued to work, despite doctors giving her ten years to live. But in an exclusive interview, she told The Sun how her illness took a heavy toll. Liz, who smoked 30 cigarettes a day for 55 years before finally kicking the habit, says she was left barely able to WALK across the set, relying on TV hubby Bill Tarmey to perform “action” scenes for her.
She also STRUGGLED to learn her lines, needed scenes RE-WRITTEN to mask her ill health, and relies on a daily cocktail of DRUGS simply to leave her Manchester flat. But the 68-year-old star insists she will ALWAYS be Vera — and wants the touching message: “Ta-ra Chuck” on her gravestone. Twice-wed Liz, whose illness has left her with just one third of lung capacity, recalled how she nearly collapsed while at Buckingham Palace to collect her MBE in 2000. She battled to walk up a flight of stairs to meet the Queen and, when a Royal aide rushed to her side, she refused to tell him why.
Liz said: “I was so embarrassed I lied and said I had a sore foot. I could kick myself for smoking, but it was just so hard to stop. I was furious when I went to the Palace and thought I was going to faint on one of the proudest days of my life.” Liz, who has five grandchildren, was first diagnosed with mild emphysema ten years ago after she went to hospital with stomach ulcers. She said: “At that time I thought I was on my way out. I was coughing up so much blood it was like my throat had been cut. I was convinced I had cancer but was diagnosed instead with stomach ulcers and a mild case of emphysema.”
But things were to get worse still. And in a warning to smokers, Liz said: “I didn’t really know much about it then and only gave up smoking for a year. I wish the dangers had been pointed out to me more clearly.” Liz opened her heart about her decision to quit Corrie in the sun-kissed Spanish town where she and husband Don have a villa. he star, whose final scenes in the ITV1 soap will be screened next January, found herself battling to continue as Vera as her illness took hold.
She told how on several occasions, bosses had to call an ambulance as she became breathless, sparking terrifying panic attacks. She finally decided to leave so she could enjoy more family time. Mum-of-four Liz said: “I always thought I would play Vera until my dying day — but now I just want to spend the rest of my days enjoying life with my family.
“It’s been the most difficult decision I have ever had to make, but I know Vera would do the same. I always wanted to be there for Corrie’s 50th anniversary in 2010. The thought that I won’t be is devastating.” TV bosses begged Liz to stay last summer when she first asked to quit her £200,000-a-year role — and even slashed her hours. Liz said: “I was going to leave last year, but they didn’t want me to. I said, ‘I can’t go on’, but my filming was adjusted and I did.”
Yet the debilitating disease, which causes inflammation of the lungs, brought terrifying symptoms. The star said: “One day Don was driving me to the set. I’d had problems breathing as we left our flat but, once we set off, I just couldn’t breathe out. I was terrified, screaming and kicking the dashboard. We considered stopping at a fire station for help, but carried on to the medical centre at Granada, where they gave me oxygen.”
Liz, hospitalised 18 months ago with pneumonia, says she could not have fought on without the help of actor Tarmey, who plays her telly husband Jack. She said: “Everyone’s been amazing and kept me going through very difficult times — but only Bill knew the true extent of my suffering as all my scenes were with him. The director would tell me to walk across a room and Bill would step in and say, ‘No, I’ll do the action in this one’. I’ve done a scene sometimes and struggled to my dressing room afterwards — wondering how on earth I’ll ever do another.”
Bosses eventually wrote around Liz’s illness. In a recent storyline, Vera suffered a sprained ankle after tripping over a magazine. Liz says: “It meant I didn’t have to move around too much. If you think back, Vera’s been virtually housebound the last few years.” Liz was just 14 when she took her first puff on a cigaratte. She recalled: “I used to polish my brother’s shoes in exchange for a cig. Had someone told me they could kill, I’d have been terrified. But it was a glamorous thing to do in those days and all the adverts encouraged you. I couldn’t do a thing without a cig. The phone would go and I’d have to light up before I began talking. I couldn’t even set off on a car journey without one in my hand.”
But the star, who began as Vera 33 years ago, quit smoking immediately after her 2002 medical diagnosis. She said: “I’ve had bad breathing for years, but five years ago it got really bad. That’s when I went to see Professor Ashley Woodock at the Wythenshaw hospital in Manchester. He told me I only had a third of my lungs left working. I kept it secret for a long time and was given medication that helped me carry on. The doctors told me, ‘There’s a fine line now and you only have to deviate from it once to go under it’. I was in shock, but they said work would help keep me going — and they’ve done me a big favour as otherwise I’d never have got this far. But earlier this year I thought, ‘I’m going through a good spell of breathing here — I want to enjoy life while I can’. I wanted more time to do the things I’ve always dreamed of.
Liz, whose medication includes steroids, three inhalers and constant antibiotics, recalled the emotional moment in March when she told Street bosses of her decision to leave. She said: “I sat down with Steve Frost, the producer, and showed him all my medication so he could see the true extent of my condition. I told him I couldn’t guarantee to do another year. I’m having a meeting soon to discuss my final storyline, but would like to think Vera can come back once in a while. I’ll be Vera till the day I die and they’ll put ‘Ta-ra Chuck’ on my tombstone.”
It'll certainly be the end of an era, that's for sure.
I saw her do a stand-up performance once in a fun-pub I used to go to in Wigan...oh some 20 years ago now. She was great, and I've always loved her in Corrie.
Hope the rest of her years are less taxing on her health than recently. Sounds like she's needed to slow down for a few years now.
that reminds me its amazing how many Corrie charictors names begin with the letter 'R' . well there's Rita , Roy , 'R' Jack, 'R' Vera, 'R' Tyrone, 'R' Leanne, 'R' David, 'R' Sarah , 'R' Steve, ... you get the picture if you dont then listen carefully next time your watching
I hate to see that she is leaving the show. She's one of my all time favorite characters. She and Jack are hilarious together. Perhaps they will finally let Jack do her in. Poor Vera.
Im from Salford so I used to speak like that only a much stronger accent , but when I moved to the States no one could understand me so over the years I totaly lost my accent and now can't even put it on 'RYTE, NUFF SED'
Bad boy Nigel Pivaro on 'mum' Vera THE VERA DUCKWORTH STORY
07/08/2007
www.mirror.co.uk
If I'm honest, I'm not sure what I made of Liz Dawn when I first met her. It was in The Stables bar at Granada Studios in August 1983, and I was the new kid on the block being introduced into this unique club. Here I was and there she was. It was left to Bill Tarmey to introduce us. In typical deadpan style, he turned to Liz and said: "Come and meet our son." She took one look at me and said, quick as a flash: "Oooh, you were a big lad for your mam." "He takes after his dad," Bill laughed. It was a great ice-breaker and we were all in stitches. Liz said: "So you're going to be one of the Duckworths, eh? Welcome."
And that was it, I was in. It wasn't just Liz's manner that was different to her on-screen self. Out of costume, she was unrecognisable. Without the curly wig, her hair was straight, making her far more attractive than the gurning battleaxe she played. And she had a serene, calm air. But in work I sometimes felt I was a spanner in Bill and Liz's knockabout relationship.
As the Duckworths' popularity grew, the scriptwriters produced longer scenes for us. I had a theatre background and was used to learning lines but Liz and Bill struggled. They started posting notes with their lines on around the set. These could be anywhere - glued to the back of a teapot or stuck on a packet of fags - and I wouldn't always know where they were. So I'd often pick up a prop and suddenly I'd see Liz mouthing: "Put that bloody thing down."
Working with Liz was hard work but at the same time it was a dream. We never stopped laughing. When we were together, Liz, Bill and I were like three daft kids. We always had to be careful not to laugh too much before a take - once we started we couldn't stop. Directors knew us for it. And we'd often have to start a scene by avoiding each other's eye contact in case one of us went. There was one scene when a TV licence inspector came to the house. A first-time director was shooting and the actor playing the inspector was nervous. Before long he dried up - and Liz got the giggles. We were hooting with laughter, which made the TV inspector even more flustered. It took 26 takes and nearly two hours to shoot a two-minute scene.
Soon after my first appearance, the press revealed my past as a juvenile delinquent. Liz supported me and took me and my family out for a dinner. She even sang a duet of "Feelings" with my Dad. Throughout our time as colleagues this kinship was always there. When one of us Duckworths was in trouble on the outside, the other two would rally round. It was because of Liz that the Duckworths became so popular - observing her with fans was something to behold. She would play up to them, chatting as Vera.
Liz never forgot she was a factory girl from East Leeds. Fans would often take her to one side and warn her to keep away from me! And they never thought twice about telling me what a ratbag I was either. Liz is also one of the few cast members who is a true fan of the show. I remember the respect she showed to original cast members. When Doris Speed, who played Annie Walker, walked into rehearsals Liz would stop talking and become demure. But her greatest admiration was for Pat Phoenix, who played Elsie Tanner. Liz was in awe of her - especially as she came from a similar tough background.
When I decided to leave the show Liz couldn't understand why someone would give up what she saw as one of the best gigs on TV. But once she saw my mind was made up she offered me her support. She came to the theatre if I was performing and would lobby the producers to bring Terry back. And our relationship has endured. I'm always invited to weddings and special birthdays and it has been a privilege to have known and worked with her.
I'm not sad she's leaving - she deserves a break. I'm only surprised she hasn't gone earlier to enjoy the fruits of her labour. Liz has reached into the lives of millions of people through her unforgettable TV character and tireless charity work. She is a true Coronation Street icon.
I edited this down to the bare bones. I genuinely can't remember when Vera Duckworth wasn't a name that I heard in my life... all the best to her and her 'actor'!
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