Doctor Who star Christopher Eccleston has said he ran down the road thinking he was going to die during a mental breakdown in 2016.
The former Time Lord, 57, recalled reaching his lowest point where he ‘nearly lost everything’ after being admitted to hospital with severe clinical depression.
Speaking with Big Issue magazine vendor Clive, Christopher remembered: ‘I think the received idea about people who sell The Big Issue is that they’ve never had a “successful life”.
‘But I discovered that when I had a severe clinical depression and I was hospitalised… I nearly lost everything. There was one night I thought I was going to die.
‘I was running down Euston Road with a suitcase. Now, if anybody has seen me they’d have gone, “Oh, there’s Doctor Who”.
‘My point is, I don’t think people understand how quickly it can happen.’
Christopher added to the publication that he ‘broke down’ and experienced a mental health episode while filming for the first series of The A Word on BBC, which aired in 2016.
At the time, he was playing a character called Maurice, who was comic and bluff and would spend 10 hours a day being him.
He continued: ‘I found out afterwards that I’d been in fight or flight for a couple of years and could no longer fight or fly, my brain chemistry was telling me I was about to die.
‘I wasn’t necessarily going to take my own life. I don’t know whether it would be called psychosis, I was just convinced that I was about to die all night.’
Christopher has been very candid about his struggles, previously opening up about experiences with the suicidal thoughts he had during his battle with anorexia and how he felt he gave a ‘dreadful performance’ in Thor: The Dark World.
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