Susan Cleaver (born 2 September 1963) is an English actress. She is best known for portraying the role ofEileen Grimshaw on theITV soap operaCoronation Street, which she played from 2000 to 2025. In 2024 Cleaver became a panellist onLoose Women.^[1][2][3]

Cleaver was born on 2 September 1963 inBarnet,Hertfordshire.^[4] She is adopted; however, she reconnected with her birth mother when she was in her twenties, and discovered her two half-sisters, actresses Emma andKate Harbour.^[5]

Cleaver was married to James Quinn between 1993 and 2003; they have a son together, Elliot, born in 1998.^[4] She later married Brian Owen, a lighting technician, after meeting him on the set ofCoronation Street.

In March 2010, Cleaver was arrested fordrink-driving and as a result was banned from driving for seventeen months and ordered to pay a £1,000 fine.^[6]

She studied at theManchester Metropolitan School of Theatre, and her first television appearance was a small part in an episode ofA Touch of Frost. She went on to star in the acclaimed drama seriesBand of Gold before landing a role in the filmGirls' Night alongsideJulie Walters andBrenda Blethyn.^[7]

In 1998, she played Duty Sgt. Standish in the first series ofThe Cops, and also played Glenda, a woman delivering baked goods inVictoria Wood'sBBC comedy seriesdinnerladies on a recurring basis between 1999 and 2000.^[8][9] She appeared as PC Sylvia Holland inThis Is Personal: The Hunt for the Yorkshire Ripper, a miniseries, in 2000. She also had a small part in theJohnny Depp andCate Blanchett filmThe Man Who Cried. It was after filming that role in 2000 that she was cast asEileen Grimshaw onCoronation Street. Cleaver won praise for her portrayal of Eileen, the mother of a son,Todd, who struggles with his sexuality and comes out as gay.^[10]

Cleaver covered forDenise Robertson as theagony aunt on theITV daytime programmeThis Morning until Robertson's death in 2016. Cleaver also completed three years of training to become a psychotherapist.^[11][12]

In 2022, Cleaver was a contestant on thetwenty-second series ofI'm a Celebrity...Get Me Out of Here!. She placed 9th after sixteen days in the jungle.^[13]

In 2023, Cleaver made a guest appearance on the ITV showLoose Women,^[14] and then became a regular panellist.

In 2024, Cleaver wrote and published her first book,A Work In Progress,^[15] through Bloomsbury.

Cleaver is patron of the charitiesPrevent Breast Cancer and When You Wish Upon a Star.^[16]

• List of I'm a Celebrity...Get Me Out of Here! (British TV series) contestants

• Sue Cleaver atIMDb
• Sue Cleaver at theBritish Film Institute

• 1963 births
• Living people
• Alumni of the Manchester School of Theatre
• English television actresses
• English stage actresses
• English soap opera actresses
• Actresses from Hertfordshire
• Actresses from Manchester
• 20th-century English actresses
• 21st-century English actresses
• Actors from the London Borough of Barnet
• People from Chipping Barnet

• CS1 errors: missing title
• CS1 errors: bare URL
• Articles with short description
• Short description is different from Wikidata
• Use dmy dates from April 2022
• Use British English from December 2023
• Articles with hCards