Simon Cowell broke down in tears as he revealed he felt he had “nothing to live for” after his parents died.
The music mogul, 64, spoke in one of his most open and emotional interviews on the Diary of a CEO podcast with Steven Bartlett, where he told how after his losses he “got to the point where nothing mattered.”
He spoke of his incredible relationships with his mum Julie and dad Eric and the devastation he felt at their passing, before being saved when his partner Lauren Silverman told him she was expecting a baby.
They welcomed their son Eric in 2014, which Simon said “changed everything” after his mental state reached the “lowest possible level.”
He said as he collapsed: ‘Before him, I had reached the point where nothing mattered. All of this hit me very hard. Being on television I felt like a clown because he was dying inside me. I gained a lot of weight.
Simon Cowell broke down in tears as he revealed he felt he had “nothing to live for” after his parents died.
The music mogul, 64, spoke in one of his most open and emotional interviews on the Diary of a CEO podcast, where he told how after his losses he “got to the point where nothing mattered” (seen with his father ).
“If I was going to get hit by a bus the next day, I didn’t worry about any of that. It was dark the whole time. It was the lowest level. I can relate when people say that being alive doesn’t matter anymore.
I thought ‘what do I have to live for?’ I didn’t want to kill myself but I thought ‘if something terrible happens to me it wouldn’t bother me’. “Sometimes I still suffer from depression.”
He spoke of falling into a deep depression in the midst of his grief and realizing that “material things meant nothing.”
Simon also became a workaholic to deal with his grief, explaining: “After losing all the material things, I meant nothing.
“I was in a downward spiral. I was desperately unhappy, so I thought I’d turn into a vampire and work until 7 in the morning.
I became addicted to that lifestyle. I had to find something to compensate for the loss and became addicted to work. I was very successful but very unhappy. ‘
Upon finding out Lauren was pregnant, she added: “I got the call from Lauren and she said, ‘Are you sitting down?’
And that changed everything. “It made me happy again, it was perfect.”
She spoke about her incredible relationships with her mom Julie (seen) and dad Eric and the devastation she felt at their passing.
They welcomed their son Eric in 2014, which Simon said “changed everything” after his mental state reached the “lowest possible level.”
He then went into details about his father’s death and how he couldn’t even think about him for a long time because it was too painful.
Simon said: “I was in Germany promoting Westlife and they were doing really well and I called home to tell them the good news and I realized something wasn’t right and then my mum told me.”
‘At that point in my life I thought my parents would live forever. It was difficult. The hardest thing about losing your parents is that you can’t think about them afterwards because it’s too hard.
But a little later you can do it and I talk to my parents mentally. I still believe they are with me. I would have traded everything I had accomplished in my life to have him back in my life. No matter how many things I do now I still think ‘what would dad say about that’.
‘He would have loved to see me on television. Losing my parents was without a doubt the hardest thing that has ever happened to me in my life.’
After his father’s death, his mother suffered from dementia, but met her son Eric before she died.
She then broke down again when she revealed the sweet gift her mother gave Eric that she still treasures dearly.
He got so excited and said, “I’m so glad she got to see Eric, she really wanted me to have a son and she brought him this brown blanket and he still has it.”
‘And it’s all about the blanket, you always need to know where it is. One day she was holding him and said ‘I’m thinking about Grandma and Grandpa’ and then I started to believe that they are still with us.
‘It’s not a total loss. They were my best friends. That’s how I feel about Eric: it’s just pure love.’