Kit Harington has bravely opened up about his past struggles with alcoholism and the mental health issues he's faced.
The Game of Thrones star, 34, has been through his fair share of struggles outside of the spotlight, which he calls "pretty traumatic".
"Things that have happened to me since Thrones ended, and that were happening during Thrones, were of a pretty traumatic nature and they did include alcohol," he told The Sunday Times.
The actor said he "got to a place" where he felt that he was a "bad" and "shameful" person. Things got so bad that he even considered taking his own life.
When asked whether he felt suicidal, he hesitated before replying: "I will give you an answer to that question: the answer is yes. Yes of course. I went through periods of real depression where I wanted to do all sorts of things."
Harington went to rehab, and was treated in the $130,000 a month Privé-Swiss retreat in Connecticut for "substances" and "behaviors" - but "mainly alcohol," as he puts it.
He said he kept his addiction issues "very quiet and was incredibly secretive", adding that they "came as quite a surprise to the people around me."
The actor then opened up about handling fame badly, saying: "Someone said to me once, 'When you’re sitting at a table and everyone around that table you’re paying, that’s when you know you're in trouble."
Harington has now been sober for two and a half years.
"Getting sober is the process of going, 'No, I can change,'" he went on.
"One of my favorite things I learned recently is that the expression 'a leopard doesn’t change its spots' is completely false: that a leopard actually does change its spots. I just think that’s the most beautiful thing. It really helped.
"That was something I kind of clung to; the idea that I could make this huge fundamental change in who I was and how I went about my life."
Harington played Jon Snow in the HBO fantasy epic Game of Thrones for eight years.
He has since starred in the Netflix show Criminal and has a baby son with his wife and fellow Thrones star Rose Leslie.
