Jeff Stewart: 'The Bill was my universe'

Jeff Stewart has opened up about the reasons behind slashing his wrists when he was axed from The Bill in 2008.

The actor, who played PC Reg Hollis for 24 years, admitted that he found it hard to cope with leaving the ITV1 drama after so many years and that it left him in a state of shock.

He told the News of the World: "There was a blackness - a void. I wasn't thinking rationally. I walked from the producer's room straight into my dressing room in shock.

"If you are told that it's about to end after 24 years of crying with laughter and working with people you think are marvellous, then that's a big thing. So I took it out on myself. I cut my wrists - and then I thought, 'I might die here'. The next thing I remember I was in the corridor, and there was a lot of blood.

"The show was my universe. I wasn't expecting my contract not to be taken up and I felt safe there. There was no warning. Then the producer just said they weren't going to be keeping me on. In the same way that I didn't like leaving school - that was what that moment was like for me. It was a huge shock.

"I had lived in dreamland for 24 years and now I was in a nightmare. My world stopped turning. I was just like, 'What? What?' I'd rather not say what I used to cut my wrists. I wasn't in my right mind.

"I didn't know what I wanted or why I'd done it. It was like a water boiler exploding because the safety valve wasn't functioning. There was a lot of blood and I remember thinking 'I might die here'.

"But the fact I wasn't ready to die saved me at the last moment. I suddenly thought, 'What am I doing?' It wasn't logical."

He added that his friends and family helped him through his ordeal, saying: "The familiar faces helped me feel ordinary again. You realise life will go on, and you wonder if you'll work again."