EastEnders star Patsy Palmer has been open about her struggles over the years.
The actress shot to fame playing Bianca Jackson on the BBC One soap – making her debut way back in 1993. However, Patsy didn’t have it easy growing up in the spotlight.
Now sober and clean, Patsy – who is on Pointless Celebrities today (February 1) – lives a very different life to her early days.
EastEnders star Patsy Palmer bullied at school
Patsy previously revealed that, growing up, she was the victim of vile bullying at school.
Talking to The Guardian in 2001, she shared how she was picked on “by a group of girls who called me lots of horrible names and were always wanting to fight”.
As for her drug and alcohol use, according to Patsy, she started drinking at eight, sniffing solvents at 11 and taking cocaine at 13.
Patsy was ‘bingeing life away on drugs and booze’
When Patsy was 21, she landed the role of Bianca Jackson on EastEnders.
However, she soon found herself embroiled in a dark scene in London’s East End. At the time, she was living in a tiny damp flat as a single mum to baby son Charley.
I took so many drugs I’m amazed I survived.
“By my twenties I was bingeing my life away on cocaine, ecstasy and enough vodka and Laurent Perrier champagne to quench a small village’s thirst for several hours,” she wrote in her 2007 autobiography, All Of Me.
“I would be out of my head for two or three days in a row – whole chunks of time were lost. I took so many drugs I’m amazed I survived,” she added.
Patsy ‘got away with murder’
Still doing drugs when she joined EastEnders, Patsy previously shared in 2010: “Quite often, I’d party all night and go into work the next morning. Just grabbing sleep on the set whenever I could.”
However, she added to the Mirror: “You can get dressed up and look great. But inside you might be dying. I felt like that.
“In this business you can get away with murder. You try to make yourself look nice from the outside, but if you’re not feeling good inside, what’s the point?”
EastEnders star Patsy Palmer on getting clean
After Patsy’s first marriage to Football Factory filmmaker Nick Love ended after five months, she was on the verge of a breakdown. Patsy later married her second husband, cab driver Richard Merkell, in 2000.
And in September 2004, Patsy entered rehab and got clean. And according to the soap star – who has since relocated to the States – it was someone on the soap who sent her away to get help.
“I don’t know how I survived. It was the producer who first sent me away to get help when she realised things were getting out of control.
“I was basically having a nervous breakdown,” she later told Fabulous magazine.
Watch Patsy Palmer on Pointless Celebrities on Saturday (February 1) at 8:35 on BBC One.
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