Vicky Myers struggled to make ends meet as she underwent a tricky divorce and was diagnosed with cancer

Speaking for the first time about leaving behind her struggles with illness and that acrimonious break-up, DS Lisa Swain actress Vicky reveals how she’s appreciating every minute of her dream life after being cast

as a regular in Corrie

When Vicky Myers ­received a shock cancer ­diagnosis in the same year she went through a tough divorce, she was forced to put her acting dreams on hold.

Struggling to make ends meet – even taking in ironing to help pay the bills – she took a two-year break from the endless round of auditions to work in an office, while raising her teenage daughter Meghan. But Vicky refused to give in, and now, not only has she been promoted to a permanent role on Coronation Street, as the Mirror revealed earlier this month, but her character DS Lisa Swain has been front and centre of the Roy Cropper arrest plot all this week.

It has been a long time coming – DS Swain is the fourth character she’s played on the ITV soap, but the only one to become a main cast member. Speaking for the first time about leaving behind her struggles with illness and that acrimonious break-up, Vicky reveals how she’s appreciating every minute of her dream life.

“I don’t know if it’s my previous medical history, but I am so proud to be here and just to be living each day to the full,” Vicky says. “When my husband and I split up, I was quite down, bitter and vengeful, and when I was told I had [cancer], I remember thinking, ‘If this is it for me, I’ve missed out on all this time with my daughter and I haven’t really been the best person that I wanted to be.’ The diagnosis re-centred me and made me focus on what is really important and what makes me happy. Now, every time I go into work and see the Coronation Street sign, it’s quite overwhelming.”

Vicky, 48, has spent the past three years making occasional appearances as no-nonsense DS Swain, investigating the acid attack on Daisy Midgeley and ­Stephen Reid’s murderous reign. But bosses have given her a full-time role, and she is fully centre stage after arresting Roy for suspected murder, following the disappearance of teenager Lauren Bolton. It is a far cry from 2010 when her life fell apart and she found herself a single mum. Just a few months later, doctors spotted a suspicious mark – by chance while she was taking her nephew for a medical check-up.

“My nephew has a heart condition,” she says. “As we turned to leave, the doctor said, ‘Can I have a look at that mark on your leg?’ Within five days I was in hospital. I was wearing three-quarter length combat trousers that day. You can roll them up into shorts, which I did in the car just before the appointment, because it was a really hot June day. It’s quite incredible to think that if it had been a miserable day the doctor would never have seen the little dark mark on my calf. I definitely had an angel watching over me that day.”

Vicky stars as DS Swain in Coronation Street

Doctors discovered it was skin cancer and her ex helped her look after Meghan as she recovered from reconstructive surgery. Six months later, she was able to return to auditioning, but by 2013, worn down by rejections, she decided to give up on acting altogether.

“I felt financially, mentally and ­physically I needed a break just to breathe,” she recalls. “Working as an actress was difficult. There were times when the phone didn’t ring, or I didn’t get chosen after an audition. It was ­enormously stressful and I was doing anything to make ends meet, including people’s ironing. You tell yourself it’s just not your time, but that doesn’t help when you’ve got a young family and bills – I just couldn’t make it work.”

Vicky took an office job in a casting house, having to watch firsthand as other hopefuls went for auditions. “I knew I was going to come back,” she says. “Of course, I kept thinking, ‘I need to get a permanent full-time job’. But I didn’t. Some people might call that stupidity or arrogance, but I would never have been happy full-time in an office job.” Finally, in 2016, she landed the Harlan Coben series The Five, followed by Channel 4 ’s Ackley Bridge and The Long Shadow.

But it was the Corrie cobbles she had always wanted to tread. Vicky, of Stockport, Greater Manchester, says: “In the North, as soon as you say you’re an actress, people say, ‘Oh, have you been in Coronation Street?’ Now I can say I have. On my very first day, I walked down the cobbles and I thought, ‘I know you.’ I’ve grown up watching the show, so it feels like home.”

Her ambition had started as the daughter of pub landlords in Stockport. After leaving school she took a job in telesales and by the time she was 20 she was married with a baby. She recalls: “After that I did all sorts of jobs, I was a cleaner, I worked behind a bar, I was a waitress. But when I was holding my daughter, I thought, ‘Do I ever want to say to her when she’s older, I wish I’d done this…’ You lead by example, so I decided to make this dream become a reality. I picked up a copy of Yellow Pages and found the number of an acting and modelling agency.”

To her amazement one of her first jobs was on Corrie. “I was in scenes with Denise Welch and Phil Middlemiss, who played Natalie and Des Barnes,” she says. “I was playing a nurse and it was the episode where Des died. To watch Denise, and to learn the jargon and etiquette, was incredible, money can’t buy that kind of experience.”

In 2007, she played a paramedic on the soap and she appeared in 2010 as a driver flagged down by Tyrone Dobbs following a car crash. More permanent roles proved elusive, but Vicky refused to give up hope, sacrificing holidays and nights out to try to make her dream come true. Vicky, whose daughter Meghan is now 28 and a teacher, can’t quite believe how it all turned out.

“When Swain arrested Kelly Neelan for the hate crime storyline, I got shouted at in the street for arresting the wrong person,” laughs Vicky. “It made me realise the enormity of Coronation Street and how viewers are so heavily invested in this iconic show. It’s taken me a while to get here, but it’s literally a dream come true.”