Emrhys Cooper, probably best known as senior cult member Rowan Cunliffe in Coronation Street was born in Gara Bridge on Valentine’s Day 1985 in a half-converted barn.

He recalls: “I have great memories growing up in Devon.

“We moved to Buckfastleigh for a little bit and then I moved to Little Hempston between the ages of 12 and 16.

“I spent a lot of time on my own playing around in the woods.

“I had a very vivid imagination and some imaginary friends but I love nature and I love animals and I have a lot of happy memories.

Emrhys struggled with his sexuality:

“I grew up in a time where just there wasn't as much information about sexuality.

“There weren't many gay people around.

“If there were, they were maybe hiding or not obvious to me.

“So I thought, you know, I knew I was ‘other’ and about 12 or 13, I started to think that I was gay.

“The way gay characters were depicted on television was often negative.

“They were lonely or dying of AIDS or overly flamboyant, like the clown, the joke.

“So it was reinforced that it was kind of a negative thing. That was challenging.

“Just, you know the small, narrow, slightly narrow-minded, kind of backwards thinking in regards to sexuality.

“It's obviously changed a lot now.

“I left here, God, over 20 years ago, 25 years ago.

“Coming back, I'm just in a much different headspace, so I feel I can witness it differently.

Emrhys describes how he got into the performing arts:

“My dad was part of the Hood Players doing a lot of Shakespeare and my mother was dancing so I was going to productions with them from a very young age and I I struggled learning at school as I was undiagnosed with dyslexia and ADHD

“I discovered dancing around six years old and quickly channeled all my energy and focus into that and it really helped boost my morale.

“I luckily had talent and teachers at local teachers saw saw my gift and really pushed me and my parents believed in it too thankfully and really it thanks to my mum you know she really sacrificed a lot for my career and my dad but you know they went they went without.

“It was expensive these dance classes and she spent a lot of her time taking me to classes, taking me to competitions I'm so grateful to them both.

“I really wouldn't be here where I am today without that and even though I had a bit of a rough time with the Steiner School, we did a lot of plays and musicals and again that was celebrated.

“A lot of my career is thanks to my parents and growing up here and having the opportunity to get into performing art school when I was 16.

“I trained in ballet and musical theatre and I worked as a dancer predominantly for the first five or six years of my career.

“I was doing musicals in the West End, touring, working with different recording artists like Madonna, the Pussycat Dolls and the Sugababes.

“I got to perform around the world which is pretty cool and I was getting paid to go to all these countries.

“I went to countries I hadn't even heard of such as Bhutan.

“I did two movies there and then moving to LA I had to kind of start from scratch because I didn't really have any contacts so I moved there at 23 and it was very challenging in the beginning few years didn't have a support system didn't have any friends money was very tight but I'm proud that I stuck at it.

“I lived in the US for 15 years-10 in LA and five in New York and you know I finished my LA journey with two homes, a husband (Donal) two dogs (Viviane and Monty) and a cat (Bonnie).

There’s very little Emrhys hasn’t done. He’s an actor, director, writer and dancer but how does he see himself?:

“It might sound a little like ‘rah-rah’ to say I'm a storyteller but I really consider that's what I do you know whether it's a soap whether it's a music video whether it's a feature film I'm directing it's all storytelling and I love telling stories and entertaining people and inspiring people I learned a lot about life growing up in this small town from movies from TV from soaps you know like I started watching soaps at a young age and they educated me more than I was learning sometimes at school now we're talking about soaps of course.”

Of course Coronation Street has massively raised his public profile:

“The Institute yes-it was an it's pretty amazing how it happened so about two years ago I made a decision I wanted to spend more time in the UK to be closer to my parents.

“My mum's in a nursing home in Brixton called the Three Corners.

“She had a stroke and my dad's on his own so I've been kind of yearning to come back and spend more time and be be here for them and when this opportunity came along I seized it.

“It was the right opportunity, the right role, the right kind of storyline and it's been amazing.”

Emrhys had some real-life experience of a cult through his parents:

“Around 22 years ago my parents relocated from Devon to London.

“They didn't know that many people, and they joined this wellness, fitness kind of class.

“A lot of these organizations disguised themselves cleverly through marketing and other things.

“So they got into it, and at first it was amazing, they were losing weight, they were getting fit, they were meeting great people, they were almost giddy with excitement, and I was really happy for them.

“I thought they'd discover this amazing new place that seemed like changing their life in a positive way. But gradually as they raised up the levels, they started to have warning red flags, very similar to the storyline on Coronation Street.

“The deeper you get into something, the more they want complete control, the more they want to know your devotion.

This in the time of the year for all things spooky which brings us to a film just out:

“I'm in Nosferatu playing the role of Thomas Hutter, which has actually just came out.

“It's a remake of the first ever vampire movie, Nosferatu, which is an unofficial adaptation of Dracula. “You know, it's the original Dracula story.

“And it's quite exciting what they've done.

“Basically, we call it a remix or a reimagining because they've taken the original film, taken the original actors out, and they've put us in, so, we've actually been put into the old film.

“Obviously, there's new camera movements, and there's a lot of CGI and special effects, but the original is such a masterpiece.

“I had to replicate a lot of the movements-if the original actor was walking through a door, I had to walk through a door but luckily the director did give me a lot of freedom.

“There's a lot of humour to it.

“I can really relate to Thomas Hutter's journey.

“I mean, he presents himself with this over-the-top bravado and insincere charisma that's hiding kind of a naivete.

“He thinks that basically wealth will fix his broken spirit.

“He's been married for a year, he hasn't consummated the marriage and he wants wealth to make himself feel better.

“I can kind of relate to some of these things- moving to LA, not having necessarily enough.

By the end he realises he has everything around him that he needs.

“The simple things make him happy.

“Well, the movie was actually shot eight years ago so it got stuck in like a kind of post-production.

“The visual effects have been very difficult and it was an independent film, they ran out of money so I'm actually surprised at seeing the light of day.

“I'm really grateful because it's hard to pull something like that off on a small budget without a studio backing it.

In a very different guise Emphrys will be in panto:

“I'm in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs at the St. Helens Theatre Royal and I'm playing Prince Charming.

We open on November 30 and we're running till January 12.

It’s not his first taste of panto: “I actually did it at the Civic Hall in Totnes many moons ago- Silly Billy and Mother Goose.

“I played Aladdin in Maidstone. Yeah, I've done quite a few pantos.”

Finally, what are his plans for the future?

“I have got a few things brewing and the plan is to live in the UK.

“I moved my husband, two dogs and cat over.

“We're currently in Manchester and there’s some more Corrie coming out later this year.

“More of Rowan to look out for, more mischief.”