Sheridan: “I’ve never felt love like this – I can’t wait for another baby!”
Actress Sheridan Smith bravely opens up on her new ITV show about her mental health battle and how she overcame fears about becoming a first-time mum
She only welcomed her son Billy in May, and despite worries over her own mental health and how she’d cope as a mum, Sheridan Smith says she is already looking forward to adding to her brood with fiancé Jamie Horn.
Starring in ITV documentary, Sheridan Smith: Becoming Mum, the actress is clearly overjoyed about becoming a new parent, saying on the show, which is set to air this week, “I’ve never felt love like it. He completes me and I’m wanting to start it all over again. I never thought that would be me, my life, but I can’t wait to get a sibling for him now.”
BREAKDOWN
But finding happiness hasn’t been a smooth journey and in the new, one-off film, which Sheridan admits was “an emotional rollercoaster”, she bravely opens up about her mental health battle – something which has plagued her career and personal life.
Following the heartbreaking death of her dad Colin from cancer in 2016, Sheridan admitted she suffered a breakdown a year later, being forced to pull out of her lead role in West End musical Funny Girl saying she “just couldn’t continue – I lost my mind”.
Fears for her mental state grew in May 2019 when she launched a Twitter attack on her fiancé’s mother, accusing her of killing her pet dog, which she later deleted.
Sheridan, 39, admits that she was worried about her mental health in pregnancy and stopped taking her medication, which only made things worse.
“When I got pregnant, I read online that you shouldn’t be taking any medication, so I stopped, and then I spoke to my doctor and said, ‘I’m freaking out and I’ve started having panic attacks again’, and not being able to get out of the house and all the rest of it, and he said, ‘Well, don’t stop the medication. You can’t just choose to stop it because you’re not there yet.’
“I’ve still got these underlying issues and I went back on the medication, and that was the right thing to do. But I worried that it was going to affect the baby, feeling selfish and guilty and feeling shame, and not knowing who to talk to about it.” Sheridan believes her mental health battles may have started in childhood when she lost her older brother, Julian aged 18, when she was just eight years old and suppressed her grief.
Speaking on the show, she added, “It was like a really nice working-class northern family. It was always happy times with me and my brothers. It was all kind of perfect until Julian, my eldest brother, was diagnosed with cancer. At eight, they think you don’t know much but it’s really vividly still in your mind, so you just get on with it.”
Sheridan has been in the limelight from the age of 14, playing the lead in Annie before appearing on top TV sitcoms like The Royle Family, Two Pints Of Lager And A Packet Of Crisps and Gavin & Stacey. In 2014, she played Cilla Black to critical acclaim in an ITV biopic. And the BAFTA-winning actress and singer went on to star in lead roles in the West End, including Legally Blonde and Funny Girl. But despite her success, she admits she’s always been self-critical.
NEGATIVE THOUGHTS
“I’m really self-critical about everything – it’s like a constant negative voice in my head. It’s a weird one, because the bigger the jobs you get – if you doubt yourself internally – you think, ‘Oh God, I don’t deserve this, I don’t deserve this’, and you constantly think that you’re not as good as they think you are.
“Meanwhile, my dad got cancer and
I just didn’t handle the news well. I guess because it was what my brother died of as well, maybe it brought up emotions that I hadn’t dealt with. I started self-medicating, drinking a lot. It was just a vicious circle and I could see my whole life unravelling.
“Then my dad died and maybe things I hadn’t dealt with caused a big explosion mentally. It was like a bomb went off in my
‘I was having panic attacks’
head. This anxiety kicked in out of nowhere, and I managed to keep a lid on it. I was going to different psychiatrists, getting different diagnoses.”
POSITIVE FUTURE
Trying to regain control over her life with the support of Jamie, Sheridan admits she struggled with side-effects after taking various medications for her anxiety. She even became addicted to anti-anxiety pills before finding the right medication for her, saying, “I didn’t want to be in a rehab, I just wanted to do it myself.”
Now in a good place, Sheridan and
Jamie happily live a quiet life in the Kent countryside with 12 dogs, a couple of horses, four donkeys, two pot-bellied pigs and the latest arrival to the family, three-month-old baby Billy.
Sheridan added, “I’ve come out the other side and feel positive about the future. It’s like I can’t wait to live and be a mum. Things have completely changed now. All I care about is this little man – it’s about him now.”
● Sheridan Smith: Becoming Mum airs on Tuesday 1 Sept, 9pm, ITV