Corrie star Conor Ryan heads to Hollywood
Coronation Street star Conor Ryan is set to take a break from the soap to pursue his film career in Hollywood. The actor, who plays Len Windass on the Street, is heading to the US in January to try and make it in the industry over there. Conor's co-star from BBC drama Flesh and Blood Stephen Graham has become a US film star and the show's director Julian Farino went on to become a big success in America with hit TV series Entourage. Conor also trained at the same drama school as Gary Oldman. Conor spoke about his character's time on Coronation Street: "As the chief trouble causer and all round ducker and diver in the notorious Windass family, Len Windass has played a pivotal role in helping to turn the Windasses into a classic Corrie family." The actor has been running marathons, half marathons and 10k races to raise hundreds of thousands of pounds for Leukaemia research - including taking part in the Great North Run with many other faces from Coronation Street and Emmerdale for TV Times. Conor will also be singing a John Lennon classic at the Royal Albert Hall on 10 December. Click here to watch whatsontv.co.uk’s new weekly soaps video preview, the Soap Scoop
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Patrick McLennan is a London-based journalist and documentary maker who has worked as a writer, sub-editor, digital editor and TV producer in the UK and New Zealand. His CV includes spells as a news producer at the BBC and TVNZ, as well as web editor for Time Inc UK. He has produced TV news and entertainment features on personalities as diverse as Nick Cave, Tom Hardy, Clive James, Jodie Marsh and Kevin Bacon and he co-produced and directed The Ponds, which has screened in UK cinemas, BBC Four and is currently available on Netflix.
An entertainment writer with a diverse taste in TV and film, he lists Seinfeld, The Sopranos, The Chase, The Thick of It and Detectorists among his favourite shows, but steers well clear of most sci-fi.