... was originally Maria Sutherland. She entered the soap when Tyrone Dobbs and Jack Duckworth (Bill Tarmey) brought Tyrone's greyhound Monica to her parents' kennels, where she worked, hoping to breed from her (that's Monica, not Maria). She soon began a relationship with Tyrone, who was followed by Nick Tyldesley and Jason Grimshaw (among others), before Maria married Liam Connor. The marriage was fraught with difficulties, and it ended when Liam was murdered by a contract killer employed by his business associate and love rival Tony Gordon. Maria had just found out that she was pregnant; she named her son Liam, after his late father. She still uses the surname Connor, and and her love life continues unabated.
In one of Coronation Street's more bizarre family relationships, the man–magnet Maria is the sister of the gormless Kirk.
Samia Ghadie, the actress who plays Maria, was born in Eccles, near Salford, in 1982. Her father is described as French–Lebanese, and her mother is English. She married property developer Matt Smith in 2005; they have one daughter, but the marriage was dissolved in 2011. In 2013 Samia appeared on ITV's Dancing on Ice, and began a relationship with her French professional partner, Sylvain Longchambon. She gave birth to a son in 2015, and the couple married in 2016.
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