Helen Worth

Helen Worth (born Cathryn Helen Wigglesworth; 7 January 1951) is an English actress, best known for playing Gail McIntyre in the ITV soap opera, Coronation Street since 1974. For her 40 years on the show, she received the Outstanding Achievement Award at the 2014 British Soap Awards.

Early life

Cathryn Helen Wigglesworth was born to Alfred and Gladys Wigglesworth in Leeds and grew up in Ossett, Wakefield, where her parents ran a small seafront hotel. She was brought up in a middle-class family and attended private school. At the age of eight her parents fostered Ghanaian-born Wilson Kpikpitse, who was sent to Britain as an overseas student at the age of eleven and remained with the family for eight years, but moved on following the death of Worth's mother, who was killed in a hit-and-run road accident while she was on a visit to Brighton.

Worth's grandmother lived in Bradford and ran a boarding house for music hall performers, which prompted her desire to perform. She took dancing lessons from the age of three, and took part in many school theatrical productions. At the age of ten, she read stories on Granada Television's Scene at 6.30, and appeared in an episode of BBC's Z-Cars. At the age of twelve she played one of the von Trapp children in a stage production of The Sound of Music, at the Palace Theatre in London, a role that kept her in London for nine months. Following this she returned to Morecambe to finish her education and later attended the Corona Theatre School in London.