Inside Coronation Street’s Alison King’s life with co-star romance and modelling career

Alison King plays Carla in Coronation Street (Image: ITV)

Alison King has become somewhat of a soap icon thanks to her role as Carla Connor in Coronation Street. The actress has been a firm fixture on the cobbles for 18 years now, having joined the cast back in 2006.

Alison, 51, has had a number of huge storylines during her time on Coronation Street, including becoming the target of serial killer Stephen Reid, being kidnapped, raped by her boyfriend Frank Foster, battling alcoholism, having an affair, and even becoming a murder suspect. Her character is now at the centre of a new romance storyline, with Carla having grown very close to DS Lisa Swain (Vicky Myers) over recent months.

Thankfully, away from the Cobbles, Alison’s real life is very different from her character’s – and much less dramatic. The Leicester-born actress moved to Newquay when she was 18 to work in a surf shack.

A keen surfer herself in her spare time, she then spent four years working as a dental nurse before enrolling in the North Cheshire Theatre School at the age of 22. In the years that followed, Alison worked as a model in the late 1990s, becoming the face of Boddington beer and having a recurring role in the Daz adverts.

Alison’s first big acting break was in the soap Brookside, which returned to screens in 2023 after a 20-year hiatus. She appeared in two episodes of the Channel 4 soap as a hair salon crimper. Her next role – and best known aside from Corrie – is as Lynda Block in Sky One’s Dream Team. She went on to date her co-star Jim Alexander, who she became engaged to, but they called it off soon after.

In 2004 she appeared in Corrie as a one-off character called Mrs Fanshaw, brought in to ‘sex up’ Ryan Thomas’ character Jason Grimshaw. After impressing soap bosses, Alison was cast as Carla Connor and made her debut on the cobbles in 2006.

Away from the cobbles, Alison was previously engaged to Adam Huckett, a Coronation Street sound technician, whom she shares her teenage daughter Daisy with.

The former couple never married and split in 2012 and Alison later went on to have a five-year relationship with Corrie co-star Philip Middlemiss, who played Des Barnes.

Alison has had some romances with co-stars ( Image: UK Press via Getty Images)

In November 2018, Alison was pictured with a new ‘mystery man’, who she revealed was IT consultant David Stuckley when they announced their engagement in OK! magazine a year later. But in May 2022 it was reported the pair had split after ‘growing apart’ during lockdown.

The actress has also previously admitted to having some cosmetic work done to fix her smile. She told how she sucked her thumb when she was a child which left her feeling self-conscious about her teeth. As a drama student she underwent corrective surgery, but in 2015 admitted to having more work done.

She told dentistry.co.uk: “As an actress onscreen I’d begun to notice how my top and bottom front teeth had been pushed into the middle where my thumb had been. The inside bottom four teeth around the gum line were much shorter than the rest of the teeth. It was during my time at drama school that I decided to undergo cosmetic surgery at a dental practice in London. However, I wasn’t completely satisfied with the final result and always felt there was room for improvement.”