Alison King - Biography

An actress, known for Coronation Street (1960), Shanghai kid II (2003) and Double Team (1997), Alison King was born on March 3, 1973 in Leicester, Leicestershire, England. at Leicester Royal Infirmary to Alex and June King, who were both nurses at the hospital. She was their fifth child and third daughter. She went to Markfield Mercenfeld Primary School and South Charnwood High School, where she first took an interest in acting. She continued to act while attending Groby Community College, where a teacher would offer drama and dance classes to students in their free time. Alison was raised as a Christadelphian and attended the Christadelphian Church at Westleigh, Leicester, where she was baptised as a teenager. At the age of 18, King moved to Newquay, Cornwall, where she worked at Fat Willys Surf Shack. When she was 22, she enrolled at the North Cheshire Theatre School. During her time there she got her first television role, playing Helen, a hair salon crimper, in two episodes of _Brookside_. Before the conclusion of her three-year diploma, she was cast in the major role of Lynda Block in Sky One's Double Team (1997) for three years before the character was sent to prison. She reprised the role some years later.

During her break from working on Dream Team, she worked on several projects abroad including a role as an extra in the American feature film Shanghai kid II (2003) - appearing in a scene alongside Jackie Chan and Owen Wilson-supporting major roles such as BBC comedy-drama Help, video film Submerged (2005) and feature film Final Contract: Death on Delivery (2006). She made a guest appearance in the final episode of 7ème ciel (2003), playing the wife of Captain Nigel Croker's, and was featured in Coupling in the episode "The Man with Two Legs", as Chrissy with whom Jeff Murdock becomes infatuated on his morning train ride. She played one of the prominent roles for two independent films, Save Angel Hope (2007) and Back in Business (2007).

In 2006, she was cast as Carla Connor in the ITV soap opera Coronation Street (1960). She made her first appearance in the role in the episode broadcast on 1 December 2006. She had previously appeared in the soap in 2004 as an unrelated character named Mrs Fanshaw. Her one-episode role was part of a larger storyline to "sex up" Ryan Thomas's character, builder Jason Grimshaw. She went on maternity leave in 2009. In 2010 she was involved in the death of Tony Gordon storyline, in which she had to be kidnapped in the Underworld factory. For these scenes, she had to be tied to a chair with her hands tied behind her back and have her mouth gagged with gaffa tape. Of filming the scenes, she said "My wrist was sore at the end! It was a different experience anyway, acting for two weeks with your hands tied behind your back on a chair." For her role in the soap, she won Best Actress at the 2012 British Soap Awards.

She has also made appearances in a series of recurring television adverts for Daz. In 2000, she appeared in an episode of Cold Feet as "Girlpower", a seductive Internet avatar. King also appeared in the second episode of the fourth series of _Auf Wiedersehen, Pet_ in 2004.

She had a five-year relationship with former Coronation Street actor Philip Middlemiss (who played Des Barnes).

In 2006, King became engaged to fellow actor Jim Alexander who co-starred in several series of Dream Team with her, as well as the Daz adverts. However, the pair split in early 2007.

She dated Adam Huckett, a Coronation Street sound technician from April 2007. She gave birth to their daughter, Daisy Mae, on 11 February 2009. King has also stated that she wishes to have more children in the future. She became engaged to Huckett in September 2011 while on a trip to Paris, however, on 16 October 2012 it was reported that the engagement was off as they had split up.