EXCLUSIVE: ITV Coronation Street Kit Green actor had surprising career before landing dream role

Jacob Roberts, 34, has proved a hit since joining Coronation Street as Bernie Winter’s long-lost son earlier this year and has already been involved in a host of gripping storylines.

But just three weeks before starting on the soap Jacob was clambering up ladders erecting aerials, having been unable to find other acting work since leaving Hollyoaks the previous year.

“It was a low moment,” he says. “Eight months previously I was on TV and now I was in the freezing cold rain on top of a roof, fiddling with a TV aerial. It was winter and I was outside up a ladder in the cold, instead of inside in the warm doing lines – it was a total reality check and hard to take. I was dreading anyone recognising me and saying: ‘Weren’t you on Hollyoaks?’ I wasn’t being pretentious, but I was there to work and I didn’t want the attention”.

As a teenager it seemed as if Jacob’s life was mapped out, when at 17 he was chosen as the youngest member of the cast of the stage show Borstal Boy, which saw him performing to rave reviews at the Edinburgh Festival and in New York. “It was an amazing opportunity; it was just off Broadway and we got good audiences; a lot of people wanted to see it,” he recalls proudly. But when he returned to the UK and his dreams of landing a TV role failed to materialise, he ended up working as a joiner instead.

Laid off after three years, he then spent two years working with children with disabilities, before landing a job in a warehouse. Over the next four years he earned a living as a labourer on a building site and fitting TV aerials. He was 27 before he landed his first TV role, that of Hollyoaks’ troubled Damon Kinsella, a part he played for six years. “It took me a long time to get my break,” he reflects.

“It was 10 years. I was up for parts in Hollyoaks about five times before I finally got it.” When he first auditioned more than a decade ago the Channel 4 soap was famous for its Hollyoaks’ Hunks calendars and he put pressure on himself. I had to get a bit bigger. I was quite a skinny kid,” he says. “I had to fill out a bit more.

“Back in the day Hollyoaks was that kind of show and it was more about what you looked like than your acting! I was up for Emmerdale a fair few times too.” Yet the Salford-born actor remained undeterred. “Rejection is hard to take, but I didn’t let it affect my passion to act, that was always there,” he explains. “I always wanted to be on TV and I never thought I wouldn’t get to do it, because I do have confidence in myself.

“When I came out of Hollyoaks I did different acting workshops, I was learning all the time.” His patience paid off when he was asked to audition for Coronation Street in November last year. Two months and two auditions later the part of Kit was his. “I went straight out and bought a bottle of champagne and took it round to drink with my mum,” he smiles.

“She’s a proper Corrie fan so she was buzzing.” Jacob grew up in Salford with his older brother Lloyd and his parents Cath and Roy, who both work with children with behavioural issues. By bizarre coincidence Cath’s story bears a strong resemblance to his own storyline. On screen Kit wants little to do with birth mum Bernie (Jane Hazlegrove) because she gave him up for adoption, while keeping his older brother and sister, twins Paul (Peter Ash) and Gemma (Dolly-Rose Campbell ).

Jacob reveals: “My Mum was adopted and they kept the other siblings; they kept the brother and sister. It’s so strange, it’s just like my screen story. “My Mum was going to go on Long Lost Family, but then the council got in touch to say they’d found her mum. She’d passed the year before, so she never got to meet her, but she got to meet her family.

“I asked her about how she’d felt, but my Mum really wanted to meet her mum, whereas Kit is so resentful, so I had to steer away from her emotions.” Viewers have quickly discovered that when it comes to work, Kit is happy to use his police powers to his advantage. He’s already got sister Gemma off a charge for stealing children’s shoes by blackmailing the shop’s owner and he planted evidence to frame groomer Nathan Curtis for suspected murder.

But this week, in his most shocking move yet, he blackmails Beth Tinker (Lisa George). It was reported last year that Lisa would be leaving the show after 13 years playing the loud-mouthed factory worker. Beth’s troubles begin when she realises that Kit is profiting from the sale of counterfeit t-shirts, taking a cut of the proceeds in return for turning a blind eye.

But when she tries to blackmail him, Kit turns the tables and warns her that unless she leaves Weatherfield for good, he’ll end the career of her policeman son Craig. “I like his drive, he’s selfish in that he knows what he wants,” Jacob says. “If he sees an opportunity he takes it, but he only does things if he’s confident that he will get away with it.”

Meanwhile Kit has taken up residence in the Rovers Return, moving in to the old room of barmaid Glenda Shuttleworth, after realising that the pub is gossip central, so will serve him nicely as digs. But filming in the pub has not proved plain sailing. “I love it, but I’m 6ft 4in so I don’t really fit in the Rovers,” Jacob laughs. “Every time I stand at the bar they have to raise the level of the top of the bar. It feels like they’re making such an effort, just for me to stand in the scene!”

Cool, charming and self-assured, nothing seems to bother Kit, but Jacob admits that in his early days on the show, his character’s confidence required some of his best acting skills. “I did a scene with Steve McDonald and Tracy Barlow. I’d never met them before and I had all this police jargon to get out,” he recalls.

“I thought: ‘oh God, I’m nervous.’ I had to calm myself down, because I was supposed to be in control of the scene. “I’ve also called people by the wrong names. I called Rob Mallard by his character name Dan. Another time I called Simon Gregson by his character name Steve. It’s because you see them as that character after watching them on TV for so long.”

Jacob, who lives in Manchester on the same street as co-star Colson Smith (Craig Tinker), is currently single, but has noticed that he gets more admiring glances from women when he’s on screen, than when he’s working on roofs fixing aerials.

“When I was in Hollyoaks I remember I got more attention, but I think that was because I was younger and I was going out. Now I’m just happy to sit in and learn my lines and spend time with my Romanian rescue dog Bugsy,” he smiles. “I don’t take the Corrie job for granted at all; this is a second chance to show what I can do. I probably partied a bit back in the day at Hollyoaks. This time I’ve really chilled out – I’ve matured.

“I don’t live for the weekend anymore and I can say no to a night out with the boys. I’ve done too many of them and I don’t enjoy it to the same point anymore, so it’s just going out for the sake of it. Coronation Street is so fast-paced that you’ve got to be on the ball. These days my attention is on my work and making sure I do the best I can.”

Currently the No 1 woman in Jacob’s life is his mum Cath, but he admits that unfortunately she is not too enamoured with Kit. “She said to me: ‘you’re a bit of a b*****d, aren’t you?’” Jacob grins. “I said: ‘yes Mum, I am!’”