Stephen Graham "never really grieved" the traumatic events he’s experienced in his life.
The 46-year-old actor – whose grandmother died and his mother gave birth to a stillborn child within the space of a few years – has admitted he "didn’t know how to cope" with heartbreak, which ultimately led to a suicide attempt.
He shared: "I’d been through these few traumatic things and never really grieved."
Stephen’s mother subsequently became pregnant again – but his baby brother arrived the day before he left home to go to London, where he was planning to start a new life.
He told BBC Radio 4’s ‘Desert Island Discs’: "This beautiful joyous occasion of this little boy coming into my life and mum and pop’s life and then me having to leave was kind of a bit difficult.
"But when you’re 20 you have the world in front of you haven’t you, so you try not to focus on that stuff.
"I had a breakdown with all of these things that had happened traumatically from my late teens that I hadn’t really dealt with or I hadn’t come to terms with."
Stephen admitted he came perilously close to death when he tried to hang himself in his room.
The acclaimed actor recalled: "It was very calculated.
"I heard my nana’s voice – and I know it sounds strange and weird … and she shouted ‘Stephen’ and I thought I’d gone, because I’d tried to do that. And I just came to, I opened my eyes and the rope had snapped, thankfully.
"And then I put a high neck jumper on, one of them zip-up jumpers, and my ma and da came back and then my mum kind of saw it and she went, ‘What’s that?’ And she seen it properly and then the three of us … I really opened up then, everything just came out and I just [said], ‘I don’t know how to cope.’"
Stephen Graham ‘never really grieved heartbreak’
