Helen Worth
| Helen Worth | |
|---|---|
| Born |
Cathryn Helen Wigglesworth 7 January 1951 Leeds, England |
| Occupation | Actress |
| Years active | 1961–present |
| Television |
Doctor Who (1971) Coronation Street (1974—) |
| Spouse(s) |
Michael Angelis (m. 1991; div. 2001) Trever Dawson (m. 2013) |
Helen Worth (born Cathryn Helen Wigglesworth; 7 January 1951) is an English actress who is 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.
Cathryn Helen Wigglesworth was born to Alfred and Gladys Wigglesworth in Leeds and grew up in Ossett, Wakefield. 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 England 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.
After graduating from drama school, Worth worked in repertory theatre, which included a year with the BBC Radio repertory company. She has had roles in films such as Oliver! (1968) and The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1969 – she is clearly visible in the assembly scene at about 1hr 49mins), and has appeared on television in the Doctor Who story Colony in Space (1971), The Doctors, Helen: A Woman of Today (1973), Within These Walls (1974) and The Carnforth Practice (1974). She joined Coronation Street in 1974 and has remained with the soap since then.
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