Cheryl Fergison, the star who played Heather Trott on EastEnders for five years, revealed her struggle with debt as she appeared on This Morning with hosts Cat Deeley and Dermot O'Leary.
Falling on hard times, the soap icon admitted to resorting to a food bank earlier this year, and disclosed to the ITV presenters: "My life sort of paralleled her a little bit in some things, including things like going to the food bank, that's the sort of thing that Heather would have done, I'm sure."
She opened up about the experience: "So, it's weird to know that what I portrayed is something that is happening to millions. It shouldn't be happening but it is."
Recalling her first visit to the food bank, Cheryl expressed how she was treated kindly: "They were little angels... It didn't matter if they knew me or not, they never, ever showed it. They sat me down, gave me a cup of tea [and] I started sobbing."
Overwhelmed by the situation, she confessed: "I sobbed and thought, 'Why am I here? I've been on the television, I've been in people's front rooms but I am actually here now'. You hear these stories, and I've reported on these stories, and I've done these stories, but I am actually here now."
Ending on a note of gratitude, she said: "Then they filled my bags up with food, and they asked me if I had an animal... I said, 'Yeah, I've got a dog, Rosie' and they said, 'Okay, well she needs to eat, so we'll get some food'..
"I think this is the bit that got me, I sat there with a cup of tea, four or five bags of food beside me, and the lady said, 'Oh, we've got all these tins of Celebrations and chocolates - what we'll do is put some in bags, and you can take them home, have a cup of tea because there are tea bags included.'"
Reflecting on her financial struggles, Cheryl admitted: "I think that's a perception for everybody, that when you're on the telly, you're earning loads of money all the time, and it's great."
She added, speaking about her life before fame: "I was earning a good wage there [but] I've always lived in council estates, so I'd never really had money. We'd never really been brought up with money, we'd never managed money very well as a family."
Cheryl delved into how quick success affected her spending habits: "When I was in EastEnders, you suddenly get this money, and I thought, 'I'm going to treat my friends and my family to holidays and things that they never had'... It was kind of frittered away."
