At 55, Gaynor Faye sees a welcome change in her people-pleasing habits as she goes through menopause: “You gain some power because you don’t care so much what other people think any more.”
The former Coronation Street actress is also pushing for more space on screen for women her age. She stars in Hot Flash, her first feature film since 1999, about a mum whose rant about launching a menopause app goes viral. It’s writer Jan Birley’s first film.
“I hope it makes women of my age more visible and make me a bit more visible too, because you do reach a point where you get bypassed and I want to change that,” Faye said.
Writing has become a bigger part of her work since her mother, Fat Friends and The Syndicate writer Kay Mellor, died at 71 in 2022. When her father Anthony asked her to take over Mellor’s company, Rollem Productions, Faye initially felt out of her depth.
“I’ve had to learn how to do it, but it’s been wonderful to keep my mum’s legacy going and support the new writers that she wanted to bring on,” she said.