He said it sent him on a “spiral” that culminated in him feeling as though he was “dying inside”.
“I was on a downward spiral at that point,” Cowell said.
“I lost everyone, you know. I’ve lost my parents. It’s finality now. What I said about the material things I’ve got, everything just meant nothing at that point.”
The TV judge said one of the hardest parts of the whole experience was having to still be on television while pretending he was happy.
“I felt like a clown because I’m dying inside, and yet I’ve still got to do what I’m being paid to do as best as I could,” he recalled.
“I’d put on a ton of weight, I was eating junk. If I had got hit by a bus the following day, I’d be dead, but I wasn’t worried about anything like that.”
Simon Cowell credits his partner Lauren Silverman with helping to pull him out of his slump. Photo: Arturo Holmes/Getty Images.
He continued: “I wasn’t particularly enjoying my work and I just thought, ‘you know what? I’m just going to become a vampire.’ And I would work through until 7 or 8 in the morning.