'I'd have to tell them that I'd got one arm...' Former Coronation Street star Melissa Johns hid disability on dates
Former Coronation Street actress Melissa Johns was born without a right forearm or hand, and because she thought that part of her body was "ugly", she hid it from the people she dated.
Melissa Johns used to hide her arm on dates.
The former Coronation Street actress was born without a right forearm or hand, and because she thought that part of her body was "ugly" for so many years, Melissa felt the people she met on dates "shouldn't have to look at it".
Melissa - who played Imogen Pascoe in the ITV1 soap from 2017 until 2019 - explained in the new issue of New! magazine: "It would get to the third date, and I'd have to tell them that I'd got one arm. I'd see that as winning, that I'd hidden it so well.
"I needed to control how people saw me. I thought that part of my body was ugly and they shouldn't have to look at it.
"Now I know that winning is having a wonderful husband, where my disability doesn't even come into play."
In October 2024, Melissa married her husband, senior transport planner Dan Hampton, in a romantic wedding ceremony in Hertfordshire.
But Melissa received hurtful comments about her disability on her honeymoon with Dan.
She recalled: "On our honeymoon, we had people saying to Dan right in front of me, 'Do you not mind?' (referencing her having one arm), and one man calling me 'a cripple'."
Melissa - who played Carla, a school nurse, in Netflix's psychological crime drama series Adolescence in 2025 - took to Instagram on June 30 to share that she is pregnant with her first baby with Dan.
And she says people are commenting more on her baby bump than her missing arm.
Melissa said: "People have commented on my body all my life. Either it's something horrible or something about me being inspirational.
"But now people are talking about my body in a lovely way.
"For once in my life, it's not about my disability, it's about my bump."
And being pregnant has made Melissa rethink her relationship with her body.
She admitted: "I have a strong history of loathing my body. It came from society telling me that my body was wrong.
"But there is so much positivity around pregnant bodies, and now I really do very much like what I see when I look in the mirror.
"It feels lovely."
