Gina Rodriguez contemplated suicide when she was "around 16".
The ‘Jane the Virgin’ star has opened up about her battle with depression and how she thought "life would be easier" if she wasn’t alive because of the "surmounting pressure" she put on herself to be successful.
She admitted: "I think I started dealing with depression around 16.
"I started dealing with the idea of … everything is going to be better when I’m gone.
"Life will be easier. All the woes will be away, all the problems.
"Then I wouldn’t have to fail or succeed, right? Then all this surmounting pressure would go away."
The 34-year-old actress has played the titular role of Jane Villanueva on ‘Jane the Virgin’ since 2014, and she admitted filming the final season of the show recently brought on a lot of panic attacks and she had to stop filming to recover as she felt like she couldn’t continue.
She said: "There was a point where I couldn’t, I couldn’t push through every single time anymore.
"And I’m one of those human beings, and I know either you’re it or you know who they are, where I’m just like, ‘I’ll handle it later. I’ll deal with it later.
"I’ll figure it out later. I just have to do this now.’ All the while dealing with this, you know, your silent little dragon in your head."
It was the first time Gina felt like she could take control of her mental health by stepping back.
She continued: "This season was the first season where I had to stop production.
"I had a really tumultuous season and I was unafraid for the first time to be like, ‘I can’t.’"
The ‘Deepwater Horizon’ actress says it’s vital that as a role model she shows young women that it’s important to put their health first before their work ambitions.
She added to E! News: "It has to be a part of the conversations I have with these young girls.
"I can’t just tell them to go out and make their dreams come true and then to ignore everything else."
Gina previously admitted she felt like she was "going to die" when she had her first ever panic attack.
The raven-haired beauty experienced her first major anxiety episode after she became famous for her role a in The CW comedy-drama series, whilst out eating at a sushi place, where she started to get paranoid that people were looking at her.
She recalled: "The anxiety started coming, like, two years into ‘Jane’.
"[I] had my first panic attack at a sushi restaurant.
"All of a sudden, I thought I was going to die, and people are taking pictures. It was horrendous."
Gina Rodriguez had suicidal thoughts as teenager
