CORONATION Street star Jacqueline Pirie looks unrecognisable 20 years after her steamy onscreen affair.

The actress, 48, played the role of Linda Sykes on the ITV soap and was seen as a sex symbol in Weatherfield.

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Her character was best remembered for her steamy affair with Mike Baldwin (Johnny Briggs).

The pair later married but their marriage was a disaster, with Linda’s devious ways and infidelity left the partnership in tatters.

Linda quickly got bored with Mike and on they day they got engaged, she and his son Mark Redman, played by Paul Fox, started an affair.

Corrie fans will remember when Mark dropped the bombshell news about his affair with Linda on his dad’s wedding day.

Mike threw Mark out and had it out with Linda, with them agreeing to make a go of it despite and cut Mark out of their lives.

However, Mike never trusted Linda and the couple split up a year later, before she left the soap in 2001.

Fast forward two decades and Jacqueline has a surprise new career.

Jacqueline switched careers in the 90s to become a teacher and opened her own drama school called Jacqueline Chadwick Academy of Performing Arts.

Based in Vancouver, she now goes by the name of Jacqueline Chadwick and is known for her successful crime novels.

She also wrote a crime novel In The Still in 2017, admitting it was a “no-brainer” to pen the book.

Jacqueline told Daily Record: “Turning to writing was a no-brainer. I’ve always, for as long as I can remember, squirrelled myself away writing between acting jobs and even during breaks between scenes.”

She has written two other thriller books titled; Briefly Maiden, and Silent sisters.

All the books center around her ex-pat character Ali Dalglish, who is an ex-forensic psychologist turned housewife who finds herself embroiled murder cases.

Jacqueline previously opened up on the reason she chose such a drastic change of career.

Taking to her X platform, the former soap star wrote: “#A psychic told me to change jobs. Now I write novels.”

Fame before Corrie

The actress first shot to fame in 1994 when she played the role of Tina Dingle in Emmerdale.

She arrived in the village as the youngest daughter of Zak (Steve Halliwell) and Nellie Dingle (Sandra Gough).

Her most famous storyline came in 1995 when she planned to marry Luke McAllister (Noah Huntley) after she claimed that she was carrying with his child.

However events ended in disaster when Luke discovered the pregnancy was fake and he was killed in a van crash.

At the second ever National Television Awards in 1996 she received a nomination in the most popular actress category for her role in the serial drama.

After she departed the Yorkshire based drama in 1996, she swapped the dales for the cobbles two years later.

Linda exited Corrie in 2001, heading to Ireland to start a new life with her new fiance, before moving to Canada.

Off-screen Jacqueline had found love with Simon Chadwick and tied the know the same year she left the show.

She went onto welcome her two children, son Jamie and daughter Alexandra and moved to Canada.

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