Sheridan Smith has revealed she was rushed to hospital and suffered five seizures after abruptly stopping her anti-anxiety medication. The actress made the disclosure in a new ITV documentary, Sheridan Smith: Becoming Mum, which chronicles her mental health struggles and journey to motherhood.
Smith said she 'went off the deep end' following the 2016 TV Bafta Awards, where she was nominated for her role in The C Word. She felt 'humiliated' by host Graham Norton's joke about her 'being a drunk', a reference to her earlier departure from the stage show Funny Girl due to mental health issues.
That night, she stopped taking the tablets she had been prescribed, unaware of the dangers. 'What I didn't realise is that if you stop these tablets abruptly, you seizure,' she told the programme. A friend's unexpected visit to her hotel proved crucial: 'I seized five times and got rushed to A&E and she's the one who got me breathing again.'
The actress, who recently gave birth to her first child, an emergency caesarean in lockdown, now feels 'calm' and 'contentment'. The documentary also explores family issues, including the deaths of her brother and father, which she believes affected her mental health.
Over the past three years, Smith has continued acting, with roles in BBC One's The Moorside and ITV's Cleaning Up. She returned to the West End stage last year in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.
