Simon Cowell has opened up about his battle with depression, revealing that at one point he “didn’t care” if he lived or died.
On the latest episode of the Diary of a CEO podcast, the America’s Got Talent judge, 64, recalled the heartache of losing his mother Julie in 2015, after having already lost his father Eric in 1999.
He said it sent him on a “spiral” that culminated in him feeling as though he was “dying inside”.
“I was on a downward spiral at that point,” Cowell said.
“I lost everyone, you know. I’ve lost my parents. It’s finality now. What I said about the material things I’ve got, everything just meant nothing at that point.”
The TV judge said one of the hardest parts of the whole experience was having to still be on television while pretending he was happy.
“I felt like a clown because I’m dying inside, and yet I’ve still got to do what I’m being paid to do as best as I could,” he recalled.
“I’d put on a ton of weight, I was eating junk. If I had got hit by a bus the following day, I’d be dead, but I wasn’t worried about anything like that.”
He continued: “I wasn’t particularly enjoying my work and I just thought, ‘you know what? I’m just going to become a vampire.’ And I would work through until 7 or 8 in the morning.
“I would wake up at 2 or 3 in the afternoon and I got addicted to that kind of lifestyle. I just loved the intensity.
“It was almost like because of the loss I’d had, I’ve got to find something else to fill it. I was very successful but I wasn’t happy, I really, really wasn’t happy.”
Thankfully for Cowell, he managed to turn his life around, and he revealed that the light at the end of the tunnel was his longtime partner and fiancee Lauren Silverman being pregnant.
“It changed everything in my life. It made me happy again,” Cowell gushed. “Without question [his son Eric saved me]. I really had reached the point where nothing mattered. Even to the point that I almost can’t remember everything from that period.”
Baby Eric was born in February 2014.
