Thandie Newton Admits to Bulimia
August 2nd, 2007 by Rian | Filed under Celebrity Bones, Celebrity Eating Disorders, Thandie Newton.
Thandie Newton has come forward and admitted that she suffered from bulimia and food obsession from when she was a teen well into her late 20’s.
I must admit that the news of her ED did not surprise me. Thandie has often appeared scary-skinny in photos. I am tempted to think that her eating disorder has continued into her 30’s.
Thandie claims that it was a particularly damaging relationship that caused her eating disorder.
“I must have been about 14 and was training for my ballet exams,” she told Easy Living magazine.
“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.”
The fad became an “obsession” after a relationship with an older man. Newton, 34, said: “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.”
The actress, who starred in Mission: Impossible II with Tom Cruise, said the second relationship was “emotionally abusive” and tipped her over into “horrible bulimia for about a year”.
She entered therapy shortly afterwards but continued to “control” her food intake until she was in her late twenties.
Well, Thandie is now in her mid-thirties and continues to appear super-thin. Is she cured? I hope so.
What do you all think?
“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.”
This comment seems a little odd to me.
As someone who has suffered from an eating disorder for nearly 10 years now it just seems a little… ignorant? What does eating nothing but cottage cheese have to do with chosing margerine over butter? And what kind of health visitor finds it healthy to live on a diet of one food?
But yes, she certainly looks to have had her weight rocket around a fair bit over the years.
I hope she has/can sort her thoughts out.
I think she still have some form of ED or she restricts herself a whole lot. I’ve never seen a picture of her where i could say she was at a healthy weight, to me she always looks scary skinnny. I don’t think she got over her eating issues. Research shows that most people with an ED usually never really fully recover.
Does this mean that we will see her put on like 15 pounds?
I doubt it……
She is beautiful though
I bet she would look unbelievable with 15 pounds on her. : (
She’s freaking beautiful.
She is so incredibly stunning. If only I looked half as good - or three-quarters as good. Sigh…
She is gorgeous, but I was not surprised to hear about the ED. She does always look too thin. I agree that she probably restricts herself to an extreme now.
Her story is really sad.
It always surprises me when these celebrities come out and share something so personal. I’m not saying it’s a bad thing, I just wonder what their reasoning behind it might be. It only causes more speculation, in my opinion, especially in Thandie’s case.
Once a bulimic, always a bulimic.
I’ve always thought she was so beautiful. I hope she’s found peace.
sad story….but i understand her….i am bulimic and I know the pain she feel , the hate every single day, every minute…life becomes food and that is only thing in your mind……food……..scale….fear….
i don`t know…….she is so skinny….if she is not bulimic now, she is still obsesive about her weight… I can tell….
cured? not a chance.
she’s beautiful to me and personally i love her thin…..but its to bad that she thinks she has to be that thin to be beautiful…..Im so sure that even if she was overweight shed still be quite stunning. I hate how people think you have to be thin to be beautiful….I know overweight girls that I think are amazingly beautiful…weight is weight…..it can come off but a beautiful face will always be there no matter what.
I hate these “I was bullimic in my teens, but hey look now I’m super famous and still really thin” articles
What kind of message does that send?
you are never cured from an eating disorder.
She admitted to this (somwhere) a long time ago, I thought…
Most bulimics are not that thin, some are but it’s possible she has stopped binging but still purges on occasion to maintain a super low weight.
True Ally, MOST are not. But SOME are. I’ve seen 2 cases in particular (one on the show Intervention and one on Keith Ablow) where the women were both underweight -one of them weighing under 90 pounds.
alot of people think i might have an eating disored bc im pretty skinnny… like if i do its not one where im rlly that scarry skinny (shes defintely skinnier than me) but i eat alot more than cottage cheese i will have sandwitches and cake w/o throwing up at all. so shes prob not over it
I wander too why she would “share” this information
I love Thandie Newton and yes I believe she still “controls” her eating. I “had” a ED as a teen and you never really recover. You are smarter about it and can generally contol it but I doubt that it ever goes away. Also, it seems that she was a serious dancer and she seems naturally slight.
Ditto. It never goes away.
i dont know if ur ever cured.
I admire her for coming forward. It shows she’s human and vunerable. She’s a beautiful and stunning woman. I understand where she is coming from. In life there are many things we can’t control, so sometimes we feel if we control our weight and what we eat, at least we are in control of something.
Is she the actress who was on Oprah and mentioned she had an unassisted homebirth (ie no midwife present, no medical assistance)?
She was great in MI3. No chemistry with Tom but with the baddie, she had good chemistry, I thought. Gorgeous woman.
And I agree, still restricts her food intake, clearly and perhaps manages overwhelming feelings with bulimia. The rates of ED amoung dancers say it all…
:( I always believed she was just a naturally super-skinny person. But if she had an ed, I would be tempted to say she still restricts and controls her eating heavily. She could afford to gain a few pounds, definitely.
She’s an absolute stunner, that’s for sure.
I agrre with Maddie and you other girls who pointed out that you NEVER get cured from ED. You may get better, but it´ll never go away. And I speek from experience.
Would it really be bulimia? It doesn’t seem like she mentioned bingeing, but more restricting and purging, without bingeing. Oh, well. I hate bulimia so much…
“controls” eating? Dont you mean “restrict”? She may have had bulimia, but she looks like she’s anorexic
I think she still has an eating disorder.
thats really sad. i had always stuck with the belief that she was just naturally really skinny. i think its obvious that she still restricts tho. im really curious why she decided to tell everyone. its not like she needs the extra press or attention
gah, i totally agree with everyone who said an eating disorder never quite goes away. i think you can definitely get better and recover somewhat, but it sticks with you.
why do these celebs “come out” with having an ed? it gets them like, half a page in a tabloid for a week n then no one thinks much of it.
she’s very thin but I don’t think she’s bulimic now,she can have a ED but not bulimia,she’s definitly too thin for bulimia.
I believe she has mentioned this before. It isn’t the first time she has said it. I agree with the others that have said that eating disorders never go away. She probably still struggles.
This woman is absolutely gorgeous.
I’m with Lambman on this one-what was the context of this revelation? Why did she suddenly feel like sharing such a personal struggle? I don’t admire her for being outspoken about it, it’s not as if she’s the only one. I sound harsh–maybe there was more to what was said.
Oh, and there are different types of bulimia-purging type, ect… so she could have had (or still has) bulimia and not binged. One of my friends hardly keeps food down but to her a binge is like a regular meal to the rest of us. She doesn’t eat crazy amounts of food at one time.
Sorry… I shouldn’t have said crazy. Didn’t mean to be offensive. Should have said ‘large’
I doubt it ever goes away. It’s not a disease caused by an external virus, or a physiological function, that can be “fixed.” It’s your brain. And you can never expunge your brain, with its established habits and patterns. You can “rise above it,” but it’ll still be there, lurking and waiting for a weak period in your life, to clutch you again.
And those saying she can’t be bulimic because she’s not thin enough? That makes me laugh, what makes you experts on this? You read a couple of articles on EDs and that means you understand it all? I’ve had both anorexia and bulimia, and I was always thinner when I was bulimic. It all depends on the person.
She is a terrible actress and her story is oh so touching with the abusive relationship, the margarine and the ballet classes (gag…). I wish all these z-listers (Cox, Newton, Flockhart etc) stopped harassing us with their cringe inducing life stories, took some acting classes and got some poundage on because ladies you protest too much but you still are tiny looking!
Nope, it never goes away. I was bulimic from 14/15 to about 19/20. That was 20 years ago and I still go through phases where I throw up for a week or so just to lose some pounds. Terrible, I know. I also have phases where I just eat one meal a day and just drink water for the rest of the day and then I have days where I don’t eat at all. You can never get rid of an ED.
i used to think she was naturally so so skinny
now it seems she was as messed up as the rest of them, by that i mean the women of this world who put being very skinny above everything else and hurt themselves in the process
its just sad so many celebrated women in the public eye have such issues
i am not sure if i can believe some women are just naturally skinny anymore, can anyone on this site name naturally skinny famous women??
thandie why, though i guess 10yrs on she will never truly recover
sad
i am sure she will teach her daughter to have a more positive relationship with food and body image, so its not cycle that has to carry on, as i am guessing her mum didn’t notice it was strange her daughter only ate so little
i cant see the beauty in her anymore
i see she is a very beautiful woman with this body shape but at what cost??
she has kids and a family hurting herself puts her self at risk, and why put your family through that??
all i feel is pity
its sad, so sad many here think this is the way they should lead their lives
women of all sizes are beautiful, that should be celebrated more
normally bulimic people have a normal-thin weight but they don’t look very very skinny except when anorexia changed into bulimia(at the beginning of ).
it’s very uncommon to be scary skinny or too thin for a person who suffer fr bulimia(only bulimia)in fact bulimic people are often normal weight-wise.you can recognize an anorexic but it’s very hard with a bulimic. sorry for my english!
And here I thought she was naturally thin and delicate. No, seriously. I guess my adoration for this woman blinded me to the possibility. Like most of you pointed out, those with an ed past sometimes never recover fully. It makes you wonder about the small-boned ladies you come across in life…
my guess is she’s sharing her struggle to let people know, to demystify her weight-issues. and i applaud her for it. too many girls/women look at these starts who are unrealistically thin and strive for it.
but i wish her the health & happiness. it’s such a shame what we’ve twisted this idea of “beauty” into…
she’s beautiful i think.
She’s not super thin! She is gorgeous! But I don’t think she is cured…
i like the commenters on this website. for the most part, you are all very thoughtful, sincere and knowledgeable. if we are being honest though, i think almost everybody on here probably has/have had/still has a little eating disorder
I agree she’s probably not “better” or “recovered”. But I thought I’d set the record straight about people with EDs never really recovering - about 30% of people do fully recover, which isn’t a brilliant statistic but is better than virtually no one. And another 30% partially recover, which means that 2/3rds don’t stay sick for ever.
Also, if someone has a BMI of 17.5 or below, they don’t get classified as having bulimia, even if they binge/ purge - it becomes anorexia. I don’t think her BMI is that low, but in terms of whether people can be super-skinny with bulimia or not, diagnostically speaking they’d have to have a BMI above 17.5. So they could be thin but not super thin.
Sorry to be pedantic, it just irritates me sometimes when people don’t get things right!
I didn’t realize she was the chick from Mission Impossible II. Her body has always looked good to me none the less. Some girls have to suffer to look good. It’s just how it is.
I agree with ZIA,if you have a low BMI the right term for your condition is anorexic also if you have tipical bulimic behaviour.
i’ve tried 2 make myself throw up,but i couldn’t.
hey baybay…ur body did u a favor. =) im sure youre beautiful, keep it up (or i guess keep it down)
im not surprised at all about this, not to sound completely evil.
It’s sad to hear about her struggle with bulimia…but am I the only one who seems to think that she’s not that pretty? She’s alright, not ugly or anything, but certainly not stunning.