The 'Paper Towns' actress talks about having a 'mental breakdown' and being 'completely suicidal' when she was in high school.
- Oct 14, 2015
AceShowbiz - Cara Delevingne talked about challenges in life when sitting down with Rupert Everett for Women in the World Summit in London. Ditching off her high heels on stage, the model-turned-actress read her self-written poem and opened up about being suicidal when she was teen.
"I really wanted to do well at school to please my parents, and please my family," she recalled. "I think I pushed myself so far, I got to the point where I had a bit of a mental breakdown. I have very bad learning disabilities so I got to the point where i went a bit mad. I was completely suicidal, didn't want to live any more, I thought that I was completely alone."
The brunette beauty added, "I also realized how lucky I was, and what a wonderful family and wonderful friends I had, but that didn't matter. I wanted the world to swallow me up, and nothing seemed better to me that death, which is completely insane."
The "Suicide Squad" actress went on, "So I got taken out of school, put into therapy, put on to antidepressants. Clawed my way back to some sort of rational thought, which took a while."
Cara then left school and started modeling. As her career took off, she suffered a bout of psoriasis and felt "more disconnected" from herself. It was Kate Moss who "kind of picked me up off the floor," she said. She also said her passion for writing saved her life.
"It was like, I would write and I would read what I'd written, and it was like someone else is talking to me ... it was like, 'What? Is that how I feel?' It was a very strange experience," she explained.
On top of that, Cara was grateful for the supportive friends surrounding her. "It's about finding people around you have your best interests at heart. I had a lot of people around me who were just after what I gave them ... not looking after [me]," she said.
To young girls dealing with the same issues as her, Cara said, "Mental illness in terms of depression is not something to be ashamed of. You're not alone. You're not an alien. My message has always been to accept yourself no matter what, to love yourself, to embrace your flaws. I think flaws are things that make us special. The cracks within us are the beautiful parts that need to have light shed on them."
