Sheridan Smith covered herself in tattoos because she thought she was unemployable.
The ‘Cilla’ star is set to tie the knot with insurance broker Jamie Horn – whom she met on dating app Tinder last year – and after a hellish couple of years following the death of her father Colin Smith in December 2016, the actress-and-singer finally has her life back on track.
However, it’s hard for her not to forget going into "self-destructing" mode two years ago, when she got loads of inkings because she thought she wouldn’t ever get work in theatre or acting again after she had an emotional breakdown.
She told Stella magazine: "The reason I went out and got all these tattoos two years ago was because I thought no one was ever going to give me a job again.
"I wanted to plaster myself in tattoos that meant something to me, but also that I thought meant I would never be employed again because you are not meant to have body markings in the theatre.
"It was my way of self-destructing but giving myself a reason for it. My mum went berserk at me."
Sheridan suffered from severe anxiety after her dad tragically passed away and she admitted she struggled with the "pressures" of being in the spotlight and the "expectations" placed on her as an actress.
She admitted: "I couldn’t really cope with all the expectations on me.
"I felt stressed and anxious all the time. I was supposed to be a celebrity but I couldn’t do it right.
"I was caught on camera mouthing "f***" to my dad when I won my first Olivier.
"I’d be told by publicists how to behave and I’d forget and just say exactly what I thought."
The former ‘Gavin and Stacey’ star admitted she didn’t behave like a stereotypical actress and was "paranoid" about her image and alcoholism.
She said: "I drank pints and made rude jokes and was brilliant at saying the wrong thing.
"I can walk in heels until I have a drink then I go all bandy-legged and walk like a farmer.
"And if I dressed myself I looked like a mess, so I’d be constantly sending pictures of myself to stylists saying: ‘Is this all right?’ and being totally paranoid."
Sheridan says she suffered with "impostor syndrome" because she didn’t go to drama school and was "so lonely and scared all the time" but felt she couldn’t tell anyone else.
She said: "On top of that I felt I didn’t fit in as an actress.
"I never went to drama school, I was suffering from imposter syndrome, and I was just waiting for it to all blow up in my face.
"I felt so lonely and scared a lot of the time and it killed me.
"I felt I couldn’t actually say that to anyone because no one wanted to hear it.
"All people wanted to hear was how happy I was that I was doing so well, but inside I was just screaming. I thought everyone could see I wasn’t right."
Sheridan has come out the other side of her struggles but she recalled how she reached breaking point when her father was in hospital and she was performing in ‘Funny Girl’ on the West End and had to cancel her performance in the show because she "couldn’t cope" anymore.
She said: "My dad was dying but I was in a job where I just had to carry on. I couldn’t cope. I’d been to see specialists about stress and anxiety.
"I didn’t know what was happening to me.
"One doctor said I was bipolar, another said I was suffering from extreme anxiety disorder.
"All I knew was that the man I loved most in the world was in a hospital bed and I just wanted to be with him."
Sheridan Smith got tattoos because she felt unemployable
