Tammin Sursok has opened up about her shocking struggle with an eating disorder, which started when she first starred as Dani Sutherland on Home and Away.
The actress, 40, revealed on The Jess Rowe Big Talk Show podcast, she weighed just 42kg, lost two teeth and her stomach lining when she was just 24 years old.
Speaking with host Jessica Rowe, Tammin thought she was going to die and questioned why the show’s team didn’t notice her struggles.
‘It wasn’t a moment of rock bottom, it was years of rock bottom, and I was just like “I’m done”,’ she said.
‘I mean, it was a different time then, but how did they not know? How did they not say anything?’ Tammin added referring to the Home and Away team. ‘I feared that if I went back to that (being overweight) then the emotional pain would be worse than the physical one I was putting myself through.’
Tammin said she has ‘never looked back’ since overcoming her eating disorder in 2006.
‘At 23, I hit rock bottom. I stopped wanting to be sick. And I’ve been healthy every day since,’ she wrote.
She encouraged her followers grappling with the same issues not to isolate themselves and to speak to someone because ‘secrets make you sick’.
She added: ‘When we embrace those imperfections we ARE “perfect”.’
Tammin starred on Home and Away between 2000 and 2004, before pursuing a short-lived musical career for two years.
By 2006, Tammin had relocated to Los Angeles and is now best known for her roles in U.S. dramas The Young and the Restless and Pretty Little Liars.
She married film producer Sean McEwen in 2011, and the couple share two daughters: 11-year-old Phoenix and five-year-old Lennon.