Emily Lloyd: How I was emotionally scarred for life by a brutal sex abuser - when I was five

• Actress makes the revelations in her autobiography Wish I Was There
• The book is serialised in The Mail on Sunday's Event magazine today
  

By
Lara Gould

Actress Emily Lloyd has revealed for the first time that she was sexually abused when she was five years old.

Emily,
43, who shot to fame as a 16-year-old in the hit 1987 film Wish You
Were Here, makes the revelations in her forthcoming autobiography Wish I
Was There, which is serialised in The Mail on Sunday’s Event magazine
today.

She says her abuser was a family friend who babysat for her and her younger sister.

Emily writes: ‘Mum had so many demands on her time that she often trusted babysitting duties to friends.

‘One family friend was an older man. What she didn’t know was that he was a depraved predator.

‘The man, once invited into the family home, betrayed that trust in the most sickening way imaginable.

‘He would come into my room after I’d gone to bed and subject me to acts so abhorrent it’s too painful to recount.

‘They were accompanied by the classic threats; if I told a soul about what was happening, worse would happen.

‘I felt dirty and worthless, invaded and helpless.

‘It
went on for weeks, perhaps months. I never disclosed what was
happening. Who would believe a five-year-old girl over a grown man? It
seemed better to lock it away.’

The star now claims the pressure of
confronting the abuse triggered the first of a series of breakdowns that
shattered her career.

Her
portrayal of a sexually precocious teenager in Wish You Were Here had
turned her from an unknown London teenager into the darling of Hollywood
almost overnight.

Pivotal role: Emily as a sexually precocious teenager in Wish You Were Here, the part that set her up for stardom

Blockbuster: Emily Lloyd became the darling of Hollywood overnight and starred in In Country with Bruce Willis

Emily as a young child at about the time she was abused

She moved to the US at 17 and went on
to star in blockbuster A River Runs Through It with Brad Pitt and In
Country with Bruce Willis, and dated a string of celebrity boyfriends
including Val Kilmer and Sean Penn.

But the demons of her past began to catch up with her as she fought battles with drugs and mental illness.

She writes: ‘I started dabbling in cocaine.

‘The relief from every day misery
might have been fleeting, but it was respite. I’m not proud to admit
this but in my lowest moments I have even resorted to crack cocaine.’

Emily,
the daughter of Only Fools And Horses star Roger Lloyd-Pack and theatre
agent Sheila Hughes, has since been treated for schizophrenia and
depression and has not worked for four years.

She has never married and lives alone in East London, but says her mental health has now stabilised.

Emily, left, is the daughter of Only Fools and Horses star Roger Lloyd-Pack