Lily's big moment of truth

After splitting from her husband and spiralling, Lily Allen has checked herself into a clinic. Zoé Beaty looks at what led the actor and singer to crisis point and where she goes next

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In the video for her 2006 hit single "Smile", Lily Allen was getting her own back. She was 21, boldly British, and an antidote of sorts - a new personality cutting through the civilised sounds of the very early 2000s, when pop stars tended to be polished and girls were girls. Instead, our first glimpse of Allen was as a rude, regretful, and vengeful young woman; sweet and sour, singing for her own self-worth. "I couldn't stop laughing/ No, I just couldn’t help myself,” she sang about an imaginary ex she’d paid thugs to beat up when he broke her heart. “You ruined my mental health/ I was quite unwell.”

Almost 20 years later, Allen is still trying to work through her own troubled relationships and mental health. On her hit BBC podcast Miss Me?, which she presents twice weekly with her close childhood friend Miquita Oliver, Allen, 39, who has previously been diagnosed with ADHD, PTSD and bipolar disorder, announced that she was taking a break. “I’m finding it hard to be interested in anything,” she told listeners. “I’m really not in a good place ... I’ve been spiralling and spiralling, and it’s got out of control.” Amid reports that Allen and her husband, Stranger Things star David Harbour, were divorcing, she had checked herself into an £8,000 per week “trauma clinic”.

The news was unexpected, and for her many admirers, very sad. Not so long ago, Allen’s life appeared to be perfect: she and Harbour went viral in early 2024 after inviting Architectural Digest into their colourful, immaculate, late-19th-century brownstone home in Brooklyn, New York, as part of the magazine’s series “Open Door”. She appeared, for once, to be calm and truly content.