Simon Cowell gives credit to his 10-year-old son for saving his life after losing his parents.
The “American Idol” alum admitted that he experienced a dark period following the loss of his parents, Julie and Eric, in 2015 and 1999, respectively.
“I think particularly when I lost my mum, I was on a downward spiral at that point,” he shared on “The Diary Of A CEO” podcast, Monday. “I lost everyone, you know, I’ve lost my parents. It’s finality now. What I said about the material things I’ve got, everything just meant nothing at that point. I was desperately unhappy.”
Cowell, 64, admitted that he filled up the loss by becoming a “ridiculous workaholic, and I was very successful but I wasn’t happy, I wasn’t happy.”
It wasn’t until his partner Lauren Silverman became pregnant with their child that his priorities began to change.
“When I got the call from Lauren, which starts, any call that starts with, ‘Are you sitting down?’ You know what‘s coming next. It was like, ‘Are you sitting down?’ ‘Yes,’ ‘Well,’ and she told me. And yes it did change, it changed everything in my life. It made me happy again,” Cowell shared.
Their son, Eric — who was named after Cowell’s father — was born in 2014.
The couple met in 2004 when Silverman was still married to real estate mogul Andrew Silverman, who was good friends with Cowell.
The Silvermans, who share a son named Adam, finalized their divorce in 2013, the same year that Lauren and Cowell went public with their romance.
The “America’s Got Talent” judge later admitted to having an affair with Lauren while she was still married.
“[The affair] is not something I am proud of or wanted to happen in terms of hurting anyone,” he said in a previous interview
“It just happened … But then, of course, you have a baby, and you look at the baby and you kinda go, ‘This is what happened from it.’”
The music honcho added in the podcast interview that becoming a father has “without question” saved him.
“I had reached the point where nothing mattered,” Cowell said of his life before welcoming Eric. “Even to the point that I almost can’t remember everything from that period.”
