Chris Fountain has shared the extent to which being fired from Coronation Street has affected his life.

       The actor, who played Tommy Duckworth in the ITV soap, was sacked by bosses after videos of him rapping about rape were discovered on YouTube.

       Fountain, who had previously starred in Hollyoaks, was 25 at the time, and has barely acted on screen since.

       He addressed the controversy on Mancs on the Mic podcast, revealing that he has “been in some very dark, horrible places, to the point where I realised I needed to start changing the way that I was thinking – otherwise I might not have been here”.

       The actor, who said he began suffering from depression and social anxiety, said: “My life, my job, my image, my reputation – everything was just ripped away. Within 24 hours. I didn’t leave my house for four days.”

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       At the time, Fountain said he was “mortified” and that his actions had “hurt and let down so many people”.

       He said that he had been “experimenting” with the music when he was identified by a tabloid newspaper. In a statement, he said: “The lyrics that appeared online were influenced by a style of hip-hop that I was experimenting with at a private freestyle session and blurted out in a moment of madness.”

       Fountain said that he is still strugging to find roles and is getting by thanks to money he has left over from his Hollyoaks days:

       “As much as I like to say everything’s alright and everything’s cool, work-wise at the moment, it’s bleak.

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       “Am I not getting jobs because of that [the scandal], or am I not getting jobs because I’m not as good an actor as I once thought I was? I don’t know if I’ll ever find that answer.”

       Chris Fountain says his acting career looks ‘bleak’ after being fired from ‘Corrie’ in 2013

       (Getty Images)

       However, Fountain said he won’t quit the industry, adding: “I’ve been really upset and really angry and really frustrated, but now, I kind of just don’t give a f** anymore. I can’t do anything else. Just because that happened, I can’t just go, ‘Right, I need to stop being an actor now’. I’ve been an actor since I was 10 years old.”

       Speaking about the videos, in which he rapped while wearing a mask and under the pseudonym The Phantom, Fountain told the podcast: “I can’t condone anything that I said. I’m ashamed of it, I’m embarrassed of it, but at the time, I wasn’t thinking, ‘Yeah, I want to be really vicious towards women’. That wasn’t the case at all.”

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       You can contact the Samaritans helpline by calling 116 123. The helpline is free and open 24 hours a day every day of the year.

       You can also contact Samaritans by emailing jo@samaritans.org. The average response time is 24 hours.