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A heartbroken Coronation Street star Cait Fitton has shared a sad update online with her fans

Coronation Street’s Lauren Bolton star Cait Fitton has shared a heartbreaking announcement online.

Cait shot to fame playing Lauren Bolton on the ITV soap – making her debut in 2022. As the feisty and loyal teenager, Lauren’s been involved in several big moments on the cobbles.

From growing up with her racist far-right extremist dad Reece Bolton (Scott Anson), to killing her abuser Joel Deering (Calum Lill), Lauren’s time in Weatherfield has not been short of drama.

Away from the ITV soap, Cait is no stranger to keeping her 62k Instagram followers updated on her day-to-day life – from BTS snaps at Corrie to sun-soaked holiday photos.

Last week though, Cait paid an emotional tribute to her grandfather after his funeral. Taking to her Instagram Story Cait uploaded a photo from his funeral, which showed a football T-shirt and ‘Greatest grandad’ cushion.

A heartbroken Cait captioned the emotional post: “Said goodbye to my hero today. My best mate till the day I die, always and forever your little dancing queen RIP GDAD.”

Cait announced last month that her grandad died just days before his birthday. Posting a series of black and white photos with him on her Instagram stories, the young star penned: “Happy heavenly birthday to my best buddy.

“It’s been just over a week since you left us… and I’m still trying to navigate how to get through this without you. Hope you are dancing up there with gran.”

Meanwhile, Cait recently celebrated three years on the cobbles, and wrote on Instagram: “3 years playing the pocket rocket that is Lozza Bolton. Time flies when you really are having fun. Let’s look back on some of my favourite moments so far…”

She added: “Thank you everyone who has shown nothing but love towards Lauren over the past 3 years . I love playing a character that is so complex to play . I love her!

“I feel so proud and privileged to have been given the honour to play out such inspiring stories and raise such important issues throughout my time on the cobbles so far.

“Thank you @coronationstreet and to @brookekinsella my amazing agent for always believing and trusting me within this process. I will forever be grateful to call this my job.”

Coronation Street airs Monday to Friday at 8:30pm on ITV1 and ITVX

This year’s Sundance felt marked by great uncertainty. Personally, I was never quite sure how to feel, as the many unknowns of next year’s move to Boulder meant that it was unclear how much this year was supposed to feel like the end of something or the start of a new beginning. I didn’t know just how mournful to be, though, as the festival marched along, it became clear there was a space for nostalgic reflections.

The first movie I ever saw at Sundance was Andrew Fleming’s comedy “Hamlet 2” in the Library Center Theatre. Which means it was 2008 and I was then an intrepid freelancer who talked my way into sleeping on a recliner at a condo rented by The Times until staffers trickled out and I eventually had the place to myself because of the vagaries of an extended rental agreement. Which is how I found myself, entirely unexpectedly, in a room interviewing all of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, who were in town for their tour documentary “CSNY/Déjà Vu.”

That sense of surprise and discovery — and in-person interactions that likely wouldn’t happen anywhere else — are what have brought me back to the festival every year I could manage since. It’s exactly why I have been a huge fan of the festival’s NEXT section, made up of films that don’t quite fit elsewhere in the program. A standout this year was Georgia Bernstein’s debut feature, “Night Nurse,” a film of assured poise about a young woman (a compelling Cemre Paskoy) who takes a job at a retirement home only to find herself drawn into a series of phone scams, erotic role play and psychosexual transference with one the clients. Recommending the film to colleagues feels a little like an HR violation, but the kinky undercurrents and unsettling emotions are worth it.

Cemre Paksoy and Bruce McKenzie in the movie “Night Nurse.”

(Lidia Nikonova / Sundance Institute)

Many conversations around the festival seemed to firmly center on “The Invite” and “Josephine,” but another film people consistently brought up was “Wicker.” Written and directed by Eleanor Wilson and Alex Huston Fischer, adapting a short story by Ursula Wills-Jones, the film takes place in an unspecified time and place: a sort of medieval-ish middle European village of the mind, in which an unmarried woman (Olivia Colman) asks a local basket weaver (Peter Dinklage) to make her a husband. That he comes out looking like Alexander Skarsgård sets the whole town into a tizzy. Nimble and inventive, with convincing special effects work, the film is a charming parable that continually finds ways to reset itself.

It is unclear just how planned it was, but there could have been no better film than “The Only Living Pickpocket in New York” to be the final fiction feature to debut in the Eccles Theatre, one of the festival’s most storied venues. Character actor Noah Segan’s directorial debut, the movie is a warmly elegiac portrait of the city and the pain of recognizing when your time has passed. Led by a quietly commanding lead performance by John Turturro, the film also features Steve Buscemi and Giancarlo Esposito in supporting roles.

As the trio took the stage with Segan and other cast members after the film, it quickly became apparent how special it was to have those three actors there in that moment. Buscemi rattled off a quietly astounding number of films he has appeared in with “New York” in the title — “New York Stories,” “Slaves of New York,” “King of New York” — while Turturro spoke movingly about his relationship with Robert Redford, whose absence hung heavy over the entire festival.

John Turturro in the move “The Only Living Pickpocket in New York.”

(MRC II Distribution Co. L.P. / Sundance Institute)

As Esposito began talking about what Sundance has meant to him over the years, his words took on a fierce momentum. He recalled when he first came to the festival in the ’90s, he was “ecstatic because it gave a voice to those who didn’t have a voice. … We didn’t come to sell a film to a big studio. We came to share our small movie with human beings that could really see themselves in a mirror on the screen.”

Of Redford, he added, “His vision is priceless. It’s the gem that we all hope for. It’s the juice of why we live. It’s the connection of why this movie works. It’s the love of what we do. This, to me, will stick with me for the rest of my life. My interactions with this man who started this festival will always be a beacon of light in my creative process.”

It was a beautiful and inspiring way to leave that theater for the last time and, in turn, leave Park City behind for a future that, while full of unknowns, will for now also hold the promise of new discoveries to come.