EXCLUSIVE L

OCKED in the toilets where she worked, Nicola Thorp couldn’t believe what was happening. The manager had shut her in and wouldn’t let her out unless she agreed to kiss him.

It’s a memory that still troubles the Coronation Street star.

“I’ve had harassment on all parts of the scale, including directly from work colleagues” she recalls.

“I was once locked in a bathroom toilet where I worked and I wasn’t allowed out until I kissed the manager. I was only 19, but I laughed it off.

“Then I went home and he was probably none the wiser that he’d done anything wrong, he’d just gotten away with being abusive and coercive.”

Nicola, 30, who plays villain Pat Phelan’s long-lost daughter Nicola Rubinstein, joins a host of high-profile women who are also speaking out against harassment in the workplace.

On Sunday, Nicola will campaign alongside Helena Bonham Carter, Amanda Abbington, Annie Lennox and Sue Perkins at Care International’s #March4Women rally in London.

Nicola’s teenage encounter was just one of many similar experiences. Fresh out of drama school, aged 21, she was harassed by a married director.

“He was such a creep and luckily he’s not working any more” she says. “He worked in the theatre world.

“He just started messaging me at all times of the night telling me he had feelings for me, trying to coerce me into telling him that I had a crush on him. He started saying quite sordid things to me.

“He suggested to me that if I didn’t