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Saturday, 17 February 2007

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Thandie Newton: My life was such a mess

Hollywood actress describes her mini-breakdown

Thandie Newton seems to have it all. She’s one of the world’s most beautiful women and enjoys an A-list lifestyle with husband Oliver Parker and their two lovely daughters.

But the 34-year-old actress hasn’t always had such a perfect life. At 22, after splitting with film director John Duigan – who she met at 16 when he was 40 – she had a breakdown.

'I don't think I'd say a nervous breakdown,' she says, 'because that would mean hospitalisation, but I was very… I had a lot of shame, shame for leaving someone I once believed was everything.'

Two painful and unhappy love affairs followed, but she was able to leave the 'dark place' in her life when she met Oliver in 1997. They married a year later.

'I felt like a victim for such a long time,' Thandie tells Stella magazine. 'I used to think: "All that stuff in my past is so huge", but it's paled to absolutely nothing now.'

Anna Taylor