Amanda Abbington considered suicide after 16-year relationship with Martin Freeman ended

Amanda Abbington considered suicide after her 16-year relationship with Martin Freeman ended.

The 49-year-old actress – who has Joe, 17, and Grace, 15, with her former partner – was left feeling a "mess" after the 2016 break-up and was spurred on to seek help from a therapist after hitting rock bottom because she "hated" herself.

Speaking on the Full Disclosure podcast about what she's now kinder to herself, she said: "It was breaking up with Martin and then realising I needed to sort myself out because I was a bit of a mess. I hated myself.

"It was funny because, the other day – and I've never told anyone, not even my therapist – I'd had a row with Grace because she couldn't find her uniform and was late for school.

"So in the end I had to drive her to school instead of the bus and I was sitting in the car and I was having a go at her and I was getting nothing back from her because she's a 15-year-old and she's going through all this stuff.

"She's a girl, I'm a mother – rage, anxiety.

"And I sat there as I was driving, in my head, and I haven't said this since I started therapy six years ago, 'you could always kill yourself'."

Amanda – who is now engaged to Jonathan Goodwin – admitted taking her own life had been a "genuine option" for her several times over the years if she felt she wasn't doing things as well as she could.

She added: "And that was what my mantra used to be.

"If you've let people down and upset somebody or if you're not being the best you can or you're a bad mother, or you're not stepping up with your acting, you can always kill yourself.

"That was a genuine option for me, quite a few times in my life.

"Then I don't have to be this bad ­person because I don't have to be here any more.

"And I thought about that and I thought, 'Oh my God, I haven't thought about that in six years'.

"It all stems back to childhood and who you surround yourself with and what you put out there, the signals you send out.

"People go, 'Oh, there's a vulnerable person with anxiety and low self esteem, I can use that and push that person down'. You attract what you think you deserve."

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