Brendan O’Carroll found himself on the “edge of a breakdown” before his hit show Mrs Brown’s Boys, after suffering a major financial loss.
The 67-year-old Irish performer is most recognised for starring as matriarch Agnes Brown in the popular BBC comedy and has garnered several awards for his portrayal on the sitcom.
Mrs Brown’s Boys success marked a huge positive trajectory for O’Carroll, following a previously difficult period where he couldn’t find any support in the entertainment industry.
The actor and comedian felt “numb” after jobbing let-downs, having suffered a big professional blowback in the 1990s when he lost financial backing for film Sparrows, which the star wrote and directed.
O’Carroll was left in serious debt in the same year his first marriage to Doreen Dowdall ended, culminating in a series of downfalls that impacted the star’s mental health greatly.
Ahead of the release of his autobiography Call Me Mrs Brown, O’Carroll told The Sun: “I was on the edge of a breakdown, a clinician would have said I was depressed, definitely.
“I have never been as low before or since. I was numb, it was like I walked down a dark alley and I couldn’t remember the way out.
”I didn’t turn on the lights, I didn’t open the curtains for three days, just picked at food, didn’t eat.”
The BBC star shared his belief that he was brought out of his breakdown by his late mother, Maureen.
“My mother said to me in a dream, ‘Get up off your knees and do something,’” O’Carroll revealed.
“I cannot explain why but I awoke after 12 hours of sleep and I felt great.”
Following this, businessman Dermot Desmond offered O’Carroll the opportunity to turn the radio slot Mrs Brown’s Boys into a stage play at the Gaiety Theatre in Dublin, from which the BBC comedy was created.
While the show has gained huge success, it has also received backlash for its accused cultural appropriation and insensitivity to the trans community.
In response to the criticism, O’Carroll added: “I don’t think about them, I write the show I write. I don’t ever think of myself as being a man playing a woman, when Mrs Brown goes out on that stage, she is a woman.”
