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National Enquirer - June
25th, 1983
Gordon
Thomson: "I wanted to end my life"
The
handsome star of DYNASTY actually decided to commit suicide while he was a
struggling actor.
"I was unemployed, broke and desperate," Thomson who plays
evil Adam Carrington, revealed in an exclusive Enquirer interview.
"I lost the will to go on trying."
Plunged
into soul-shattering depression, Thomson took out an insurance policy to
leave something for his loved ones after his death ~ but he was shocked
to discover that under the terms of the policy he'd have to wait two
years before doing himself in if they were to collect even a penny.
Thomson counted the days until he could end his sorrow. Then, just
before his planned "death day," he won a film role that saved
his life.
"For
23 months, I had only one wish. I wanted to end my life," the
32-year-old actor confessed. "The insurance policy was like a
ticking clock. I knew that when the two years were up on August 23,
1979, I could stop the ticking."
"Every
day for those two years, I thought about ending my life. I couldn't cope
anymore. I had no reason to live. I felt pain and my spirit was broken.
I started looking forward to the day of my suicide as if it were some
macabre sort of birthday."
Thomson's
nightmare started while he was a struggling young actor in Toronto,
Canada. "I went from audition to audition ~ and got rejection after
rejection. My life was more horrible than any soap opera. Everything I
tried failed. Acting was my passion. I kept asking myself, 'If I can't
act, why go on?'"
"I finally decided to end it all. Maybe suicide was a cowardly
decision, so I kept it to myself."
After buying his insurance policy, Thomson read the fine print and
realized that he had agreed to a two-year suicide clause. "If I
commited suicide before the two years were up, no one would
collect," he said. "I decided to wait for two years ~ and
count the days."
"I
began spending time in my garden. I watched my plants die in the winter
and bloom again in the spring. I took up meditation." Eventually,
August came. The day he was living for ~ the day he would die ~ was just
around the corner.
Then
the phone rang.
"It
was a producer," Thomson recalls. "He offered me a role in his
new film and I accepted it."
Thomson hung up and stared at the phone. Suddenly he felt his years of
depression, his all-consuming hell of rejection, fall away in a flood of
relief. Thomson's clock stopped ticking. "I decided to live,"
he states. "From that day on, my life has been on the
upswing."
After
that film, Thomson landed several stage roles and within two years he
was on the daytime soap opera 'Ryan's Hope'. Then came DYNA ~ and
unbelievable stardom.
"I've
been through the worst and now I'm at the top," says the dashing
Thomson. "I'm telling my story so others who've felt depressed and
unable to cope might realize they're not alone."
"Whenever I have bad luck now, I remember those terrible 23 months
when I had given up hope. That agony taught me a lot. I learned to be
patient and to say to myself, 'This too shall pass'. Life goes in
cycles, just like the seasons.
"I
know the lows might come again, as they do to everyone. The next time I
hope I'll have the inner strength to deal with them."
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