A life of dreams and drama for Kim Cloete, the troubled teenage runaway who became a TV star

Growing up as a bright and ambitious child in Bonteheuwel, Cape Town, Kim Cloete had her future all figured out. She was going to count on a happy and fulfilling career as a cruncher of numbers.
She dreamed not just of being an accountant, but of being a forensic accountant, and when she won a scholarship to study the discipline at UCT, it looked like her dream would come true. But life had other plans in store for Kim. At 19, she packed her bags and fled her troubled home, vowing never to return.
In-between her studies, she worked as a manager at a store in Ratanga Junction, an amusement park just outside the city. She worked her way up to a happier position, as a data capturer for the company, and one day, a “beautiful man” walked in, and she was smitten.
His name was Randall, and he was an actor, famous as a character in the soap opera series, Egoli. They got talking. Kim had been an aspirant starlet in her childhood days, and now she was starry-eyed all over again, and it wasn’t long before she was moving in showbiz circles.
She answered a call for an audition, and that’s why, today, Kim Cloete is an actress and TV presenter, rather than a forensic accountant. Best known for her roles in Isidingo and Binnelanders, as well as her SABC3 talkshow, LunchBox, Kim is proof that life doesn’t always go as planned, and that the path to a dream career is never easy.
In this candid and revealing chat with Ruda, Kim shares her experiences and her thoughts on forgiveness, coping with tragedy, and finding true happiness on and off the screen.
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