Alan Ritchson has shared an intensely personal account of a period when he said his life began to unravel.
The Reacher star said a woman threatened to accuse him of rape if he refused to meet her at a hotel – an alleged threat he says left him overwhelmed by uncertainty and depression.
“I’m a suicide survivor,” he said during a recent appearance at the Fan Expo Canada event recently.
“I was in my mid-30s. I was depressed for the first time, and I was depressed because I had done everything right, and I had a falling out with a (woman) that threatened to … if I didn’t go up to her hotel room… that she would call (entertainment website) TMZ and tell the reporter that I raped her… and she would ruin my life,” Ritchson claimed.
He continued, “So it was like she was blackmailing me to come up, and I was like, ‘No, I’m not doing that.’ I didn’t want to do that”.
Ritchson did not identify the woman by name during his remarks.
The actor said he refused to go to the hotel room and instead took legal action, hiring a lawyer to fight the alleged threat against the businesswoman.
“She actually… cost me a lot, and also the threat of that looming over my head – I hired a litigator to fight back and make sure that couldn’t happen,” Ritchson said.
“I ended up winning a settlement, but I didn’t win anything because what I was left with was this uncertainty about what happens in life when you do good, you know, and like when you try your hardest.”
The actor said he “felt helpless,” and said the situation left him “really broken and depressed”.
Ritchson’s comments come as he navigates a significant new chapter in his personal life.
Earlier this month, Ritchson and his wife, Catherine, announced they were ending their 20-year marriage.
In a joint Instagram statement shared this month, the couple said they had “decided to end our marriage and continue alongside one another in a different way”.
The two first met as teenagers and later reconnected before marrying on May 12, 2006. They share three sons — Calem, Edan and Amory.
Ritchson is best known for roles in Smallville, Blue Mountain State, The Hunger Games: Catching Fire and Titans.
He landed the title role in Reacher in 2022, which helped establish him as a leading Hollywood action star.
This article originally appeared in Fox News and was reproduced with permission.