Thandie Newton: I still have scars from bulimia

Thandie Newton has admitted she was bulimic as a teenager and her condition got worse during a relationship with an older man.

She told Easy Living magazine: “[When it started] I must have been about 14 and was training for my ballet exams.”

“I ate nothing but cottage cheese. It didn’t seem so strange - my mum was a health visitor so we never had butter in the house, we had Flora.”

When she started dating the older man, her eating disorder became an “obsession” and pushed her into “horrible bulimia for about a year”: “I felt a lot of shame about my sexual relationship with him.”

“We used to go out to dinner all the time and he’d get so excited about eating … and it must have been my way of separating myself from him by becoming bulimic.”

“I would have dinner with him … and then go back to the flat we were sharing and throw up.”

After the relationship ended, Thandie entered therapy but admits she “controlled” her food intake until just a few years ago. She added that she is reminded of her condition daily: “I’ve still got the scars on my knuckles from where I put my fingers down my throat.”