Coronation Street star Alison King’s tumultuous love life and toyboy who broke her heart

Mum of one, Alison King, has enjoyed a few romances with her TV co-stars and once called off an engagement to the father of her daughter Daisy.

Alison King has been a regular on Coronation Street since 2006, when the Leicester-born actress joined the soap as Carla Connor. For the past 18 years she’s been involved in some jaw-dropping storylines, 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.

In real life, away from the Cobbles, the actress’ life is very different from that of her character with much less drama going on – especially when it comes to her relationships. Although there have been some ups and downs over the years as the 51-year-old has dated a few of her acting co-stars, and called off an engagement.

Before getting into acting, Alison 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. Her first big acting break was in Brookside, which returned to TV screens in 2023 after 20 years. Alison appeared in two episodes of the Channel 4 soap as a hair salon crimper.

Her next role – and best known aside from Corrie – was 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.

Outside of her career, Alison was previously engaged to Adam Huckett, aCoronation Streetsound technician, whom she shares her daughter Daisy, now 14, with. They never married and split in 2012. Alison has spoken of feeling “immense guilt” as Daisy came into the world the same day her co-star Kym Marsh lost her baby boy in February 2009, who was born 21 weeks early and tragically only lived for a few moments. Speaking on BBC ‘s Morning Live, Kym revealed Alison couldn’t properly enjoy being a new mum knowing what her friend was going through.

She said: “My friend Alison King, a really good friend of mine, gave birth to her daughter on the very same day I lost my son – literally hours apart. And the immense guilt that she felt at the fact she’d delivered her baby so safely and I’d lost my son was such a hard time for both of us.”

Alison later went on to have a five-year relationship with Corrie co-star Philip Middlemiss, who played Des Barnes. In November 2018, Alison was pictured with a new ‘mystery man’, who she revealed was IT consultant David Stuckley, who was nine years her junior, 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.”