I hit rock bottom over Harry Potter: J K Rowling reveals how instant fame and a 'tsunami' of begging letters drove her to therapy

By Polly Dunbar - PUBLISHED:The Daily Mail - 22 September 2012

They were the novels that brought her fame, fortune and the adoration of millions of fans around the world. But JK Rowling has admitted that at the height of the success of her Harry Potter books she was forced to undergo therapy to cope with the pressures of celebrity.
The sudden and complete transformation of her life, coupled with a ‘tsunami’ of begging letters from charities and members of the public, left her feeling desperate to help but overwhelmed.
The notoriously private author, whose feverishly anticipated first adult novel, The Casual Vacancy, is finally released on Thursday 27 September, also revealed details of the book’s plot for the first time. She described how she took inspiration from Britain’s ‘phenomenally snobby’ middle classes – including her own friends.

Devastating confession: The sudden and complete transformation of the author's life left her feeling overwhelmed

Global smash-hit: J K Rowling's books were turned into internationally-successful film franchise, starring (from left to right) Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint and Emma Watson

The 47-year-old has previously spoken of her battle with clinical depression, which engulfed her as she wrote Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, the first book in the series, in Edinburgh in the early Nineties. At the time she was a penniless single mother, writing the book in cafes while her baby daughter slept beside her.
She admitted that at times she felt suicidal, using these dark feelings as the inspiration behind the Dementors, the hooded creatures which feed off human – and wizard – happiness.
In an interview with The Guardian yesterday, Miss Rowling – who has sold 450 million books worldwide and has a personal fortune of £560 million – described how these feelings were re-awakened when she first became a household name.
Right - JK Rowling with husband Neil Murray

‘You don’t expect the kind of problems that [fame] brings with it,’ she says. ‘I felt that I had to solve everyone’s problems. I was hit by this tsunami of demands. I felt overwhelmed. And I was really worried that I would mess up.
‘Everything changed so rapidly, so strangely. I knew no one who’d ever been in the public eye. I didn’t know anyone – anyone – to whom I could turn and say, “What do you do?” So it was incredibly disorientating.’
As well as being bombarded with requests for help, Miss Rowling found herself bogged down in business deals and plans to expand her fortune even further, which she said she found ‘a real bore’.
She underwent therapy, which she had turned to previously when at ‘rock bottom’ while writing the first Harry Potter book.
‘I had to do it again when my life was changing so suddenly – and it really helped,’ she said. ‘I’m a big fan of it, it helped me a lot.’
The author also admitted that the pressure of following up the seven Harry Potter novels led her to consider publishing The Casual Vacancy under a pseudonym, although she later decided that it would be ‘braver’ to be honest.
And she revealed she was ‘proud’ of the new book and would be untroubled by poor critical reviews or how well it sold.
‘The worst that can happen is everyone says, “Well, that was dreadful, she should have stuck to writing for kids” and I can take that,’ she told The Guardian. Until now, details of the book have been a closely guarded secret, with reviewers being asked to sign lengthy pre-publication confidentiality contracts.
Miss Rowling has revealed that it is a darkly humorous exploration of Britain’s class divide, based on the battle among a snobby West Country community over a seat on the local parish council.
It pokes fun at the pretensions of the middle classes, who look down on the residents of a nearby council estate.
Miss Rowling is now happy in her second marriage to Neil Murray, a doctor with whom she has a nine-year-old son and daughter, seven.
Her first marriage to Portuguese journalist Jorge Arantes, with whom she had a daughter, now 19, had already ended by the time she began writing the first Harry Potter book.

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