Brooke Shields contemplated suicide when she first became a mother.

The actress - who has two daughters, Rowan, six, and three-year-old Grier, with husband Chris Henchy - suffered from severe post-natal depression and didn't think her life was worth carrying on with.

Speaking about Rowan's birth - which followed a miscarriage and seven IVF attempts - Brooke said: "I finally had a healthy beautiful baby girl and I couldn't look at her. I couldn't hold her and I couldn't sing to her and I couldn't smile at her... All I wanted to do was disappear and die.

"I should not exist. The baby would be better off without me. Life was never going to get better - so I better just go."

Shields was described medication for her depression but stopped taking it, thinking she didn't need it, which resulted in almost fatal consequences.

Speaking in New York, where she was receiving an advocacy award from the Hope for Depression Research Foundation, she revealed to People magazine: "That was the week I almost did not resist driving my car straight into a wall on the side of the freeway. My baby was in the back seat and that even pissed me off because I thought she's even ruining this for me. I just wanted to drive into the wall and my friend stayed on the phone with me until I got home safely."

She later called her doctor to ask for more help, and was eventually diagnosed with a chemical imbalance.

"I learned what was going on inside my body and what was going on inside my brain," she added. "I learned I wasn't doing anything wrong to feel that way. That it was actually out of my control."