Tim Minchin has confessed he was "as unhappy as I’ve ever been" living in America and couldn’t wait to move home to Australia.
The 42-year-old comedian and musician was devastated after the animated musical ‘Larrikins’ starring Hugh Jackman, which he spent four years working on for DreamWorks, was scrapped.
Shortly afterwards his Broadway show ‘Groundhog Day: The Musical’ closed after just five months, leaving him in a bad place.
He told The Guardian newspaper: "At the middle of the year I was depressed for the first time in my life. Like, ‘I’m done. I can’t make anything’. It was stupid …
"Almost the day after ‘Groundhog Day’ finally closed [in September], I went, ‘OK, it’s done.’ And I woke up for the first time in months feeling OK.
" And f*** it’s a good feeling … to wake up and go, ‘Oh! That was just grief!’ And I wrote some good songs about LA. So it’s fine."
Tim also revealed that when ‘Larrikins’ was scrapped as a result of Comcast’s take-over of DreamWorks, executives did not even tell him directly.
He claimed: "The people who made the decision didn’t even have the balls to phone me.
"It’s been awful … Everyone has that story but four years, three-quarters done, $50m spent. I said no to a tour every year, to two or three different fantastic Broadway projects, to TV shows. I said no to so much, because I went, ‘I’m the director of a $100m movie and it will all be worth it.’ And then, just binned. It was unbearable."
Tim added: "It goes without saying that I’m the luckiest fucker in the world and there’s worse things that can happen – but it was just a great loss of friendships and work. There were 120 people working on that film."
The composer of hit show ‘Matilda: The Musical’ now resides in Sydney, Australia with his wife and two children.
Tim Minchin depressed by life in US
