Coronation Street for the ten people on the planet who have lived in a hole for the last sixty years, is a British soap opera probably the original long running television soap opera in the UK. It isn't too surprising to list well-known actors as appearing in the show there has certainly been a bit of a fad in recent years for famous actors to make guest appearances. For example, Ian McKellen appeared in ten episodes back in 2005. Joan Collins appeared in a TV movie spin off set in Vegas, and Prince Charles even made a guest appearance at one point. These days I would be extremely surprised if someone from Coronation Street managed to make it in Hollywood. It's the regional accents considering that there was concern from studio executives about American viewers being able to understand Cheryl Cole on the US version of The X Factor. So unless the cast members can put in a very generic British accent (or even better an American accent), then I doubt that US network chiefs will get over the idea that the American public can hear. A couple of really quite famous British actors appeared in Coronation Street before they made it internationally. Patrick Stewart appeared as a fire officer in a single appearance in 1967. But that was a single appearance, so akin to making an appearance in Casualty, I don't think it really qualifies for the purpose of this list. However, there is another extremely well known British actor who appeared on a repeated basis during the early part of his career on Coronation Street. That actor was Ben Kingsley. He appeared as Ron Jenkins in five episodes of the soap split across 1966 and 1967, but not in the same episode as Patrick Stewart. As I said in the opening page of this article, it has to be expected that someone famous will come out of any show that runs for as long as Coronation Street has with the cast numbers that it has. But Ben Kingsley? The man who won an Academy Award for Gandhi? That's pretty crazy if you ask me.
