Emmerdale legend feels like ‘unfinished jigsaw’ as she addresses adoption decision
Emmerdale legend Lisa Riley opens up why she couldn’t adopt, like her soap character Mandy Dingle.
The actress, 48, went through IVF with partner Al in 2018 and she previously opened up on her decision to stop treatment after discovering that her eggs ‘weren’t good enough’.
Although Mandy has taken care of – and raised Vinny – he’s not her biological child in the Dales.
‘I would never adopt,’ Lisa Riley told The Sun.
‘I wouldn’t be able to cope because I would wake up thinking they would always want to go back to their biological parents.’
She added: ‘There are enough lovely people in this world that would like to adopt, but no, we are past that now.
Vinny is the son of a former flame of her’s – a man named Paul. Mandy revealed that she was head over heels for Paul, and it didn’t take her long to fall in love with Vinny.
In 2018 the Emmerdale actress lost 12 stone three years prior and underwent two skin removal surgeries before spending the past year having fertility tests, however she has revealed that her ‘body was being pumped full of hormones to get my egg readings, and in the end they weren’t good enough’.
‘It messes with your head and I just couldn’t do that to myself any more. The past few months have been really hard, emotionally draining, and we just decided that enough was enough. I tried it, I gave it a go and it didn’t work.’
She added: ‘Finding out that I was unlikely to get pregnant was a blow. But I refuse to be defined by that.’