After experiencing intense loss, Simon Cowell found joy and purpose in caring for his son, Eric, who was born in 2014.
The America’s Got Talent judge opened up about his past struggles in an emotional interview on the newest episode of The Diary Of A CEO podcast, talking about how his personal happiness went downhill after his father died in 1999 and he became a “ridiculous workaholic” for years.
Talking about his father, Eric Cowell, passing away from a heart attack, Cowell said, “I would’ve swapped everything I’d succeeded, you know, to [have] kept him around.” After his comment, the 64-year-old got visibly emotional, noting how much his father taught him and how he still looks to him for guidance.
“Losing both my parents was the hardest thing that ever happened to me,” he went on, calling them his “best friends.” While Cowell’s father died in 1999, his mother Julie died in 2015, over a year after his son Eric was born.
Cowell noted that he was on a “downward spiral” after his mother died and “desperately unhappy.” But he described his life leading up to Eric’s birth and his mother’s death as equally intense, saying, “I would work through until 7:00 or 8:00 in the morning. I would wake up at 2:00 or 3:00 in the afternoon and I actually got addicted to that kind of lifestyle. I just loved the intensity.”
But when he got the call from his fiancée, Lauren Silverman, about being pregnant, Cowell said, “It changed everything in my life. It made me happy again,” before declaring that Eric “saved him.”
“Without question, without question. I really, really had reached the point where nothing mattered. Even to the point that I almost can’t remember everything from that period,” he concluded.
Cowell recalled watching his son watch The Jungle Book for the first time and how the “joy he had” reminded him of his own childhood, calling it “perfect” and “brilliant.”
Eric was born in February 2014, and he is Cowell’s only child. His soon-to-be wife Silverman also has a son from a previous marriage named Adam.
