Kit Harington was suicidal after ‘Game of Thrones’ ended.
The 34-year-old actor – who checked into rehab in 2018 – insisted he isn’t “special” but hopes opening up about how bad things got for him will be able to help someone.
Asked if he ever felt suicidal when he reached rock bottom, he said: “I will give you an answer to that question: the answer is yes. Yes of course. I went through periods of real depression where I wanted to do all sorts of things.
“[I hope this can] help someone, somewhere. But I definitely don’t want to be seen as a martyr or special. I’ve been through something, it’s my stuff. If it helps someone, that’s good.”
The ‘Modern Love’ actor went through a “horrible” time and felt like a “horrible person” but thinks sobriety helped him accept he was able to change.
He told the Sunday Times magazine: “I went through some pretty horrible stuff.
“Things that have happened to me since Thrones ended, and that were happening during Thrones, were of a pretty traumatic nature and they did include alcohol
“You get to a place where you feel like you are a bad person, you feel like you are a shameful person. And you feel that there’s no way out, that’s just who you are. And getting sober is the process of going, ‘No, I can change.’
“One of my favourite things I learnt recently is that the expression ‘a leopard doesn’t change its spots’ is completely false: that a leopard actually does change its spots.
“I just think that’s the most beautiful thing. It really helped. That was something I kind of clung to; the idea that I could make this huge fundamental change in who I was and how I went about my life.”
And Kit admitted his problems put his marriage to former ‘Game of Thrones’ co-star Rose Leslie – with whom he has a six-month-old son – under strain.
Asked if his relationship was tested, he said: “Yes. You can imagine the stresses that it causes to those around you.
“I will say about my addictions that I kept them very, very quiet and I was incredibly secretive and incredibly locked up with them. So they came as quite a surprise to the people around me. Which is quite often the case, I guess.”
Kit has also been tackling his obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) because it became very debilitating.
He said: “There was something with three drains where I had to stand on the middle drain with my right foot. It got to the point where I had to cross the road to stand on one. If I missed one, I had to walk back. I had to cut them loose. They became part of a few problems I had to get rid of.”
