Actor who lost friend to suicide makes movie about how wild swimming healed her

When actor Cat White lost one of her best friends to suicide, she was overcome with a grief that she felt completely unequipped to handle.

‘I didn’t want to be alive any more after hearing about Simon’s suicide,’ she recalls. ‘It was such a weird and dark time. I didn’t feel like I could even breathe. I just couldn’t do anything.’

Simon, 31, took his own life in January 2021, during lockdown.

Like many people, Cat says that her friend had not been open about his mental health struggles. Instead, he disguised his troubles with humour and warmth. 

‘We met at drama school,’ she explains. ‘He was the joker of the class. Simon was the funny one, he would always be in the corner making sarcastic comments. He was an incredible musician and artist.’

When Cat, 27, heard the news of his death via a WhatsApp message, it changed her life irrevocably.

‘I can recall all the tiny details of that day,’ she tells Metro.co.uk. ‘I remember being so aware of my exact surroundings when that message came through. I know the exact time – it was just gone 11am. For the longest time I couldn’t take it in. I was in this weird, numb limbo.’ 

To deal with the unimaginable grief of losing her friend – and her uncle, who had died a year earlier – Cat started swimming in the wild.

‘I lived in Oxfordshire, really near a lake and I just felt really strongly one day that I needed to get in the cold water, just to feel something’ she remembers. ‘I felt like I’d lost my voice, like something was trapped.’

After that first freezing dip, swimming in open water became central to Cat’s healing journey.

Since then, she has gone on to make a film, Fifty-Four Days, that tells the story of a girl coping with grief after losing her dad to suicide, which premiered last night at the Phoenix cinema in Finchley.

‘In it, I really focus on what overwhelming grief looks like, but there’s also a focus on healing, and a girl who starts cold water swimming – because for me, that saved my life,’ Cat explains.

‘As a child, swimming for me was a place of joy and fun. I was good at it and competed, even representing my county. It was only as I entered my teens and looked around I began to see that it was just not a space where I felt comfortable.

‘I hated what the water did to my hair. Nobody who looked like me swam. Even my own mum had nearly drowned as a teenager and was terrified of the water, a common story among the Black community. Eventually I just stopped.

‘So, in the wake of losing my uncle and then my friend, it was quite unexpected that the water was the place I turned back to when I didn’t know where else to go,’ adds Cat.

‘There was something about the freedom of the lake – being alone with my thoughts – calming my busy, grieving mind.

‘I was numb and the water helped me to feel something again. Learning that one in four Black children still do not swim and 80% of Black adults don’t know how to swim, I began to realise that there was a goal to my journey with the water.

‘I want to open up a conversation around swimming as a place that should be open and accessible to all.’

As part of her swimming experience, Cat met Alice Dearing, the first Black woman to represent GB at the Olympics. ‘It was so beautiful getting to collaborate with her,’ she says. ‘I always say, “You can’t be what you don’t see” – and I think we are really starting to see the change now.’

This year, Cat also became an ambassador for the charity PAPYRUS Prevention of Young Suicide – and recently took part in a tough night climb of Scafell Pike organised by Metro.co.uk, to raise money for them.

PAPYRUS Prevention for Young Suicide

For practical, confidential suicide prevention help and advice please contact PAPYRUS HOPELINEUK on 0800 068 4141, text 07860 039967 or email [email protected]

Recalling, why she wanted to make her film and help change the conversation surrounding suicide and grief, Cat explains that the movies and TV she watched at the time always seemed to compound her feelings of hopelessness.

‘Suicide always came as the tragic end to a story with nothing to show how people heal afterwards,’ she says.

‘For me, Fifty-Four Days was about picking yourself up after suicide.

‘It’s the beginning of the story, not the end.’

Olivier award-winning actress Celia Imrie plays Gloria in the film – a woman who meets Cat’s character Ruby as she takes her first, anguished dip into the lake – and says she was ‘honoured’ to take part in such an uplifting project.

Cat sent her the script never actually expecting her to say yes – ‘but she fell in love with the project and came on board immediately’.

‘She really got what I wanted to do with it and loved the focus on hope,’ she adds. ‘Celia spends most of the year in the South of France and swims every morning so we could really connect over the water too – and she has such a joie de vivre, she just IS Gloria!’

Celia calls Fifty-Four Days a ‘truly heart-breaking yet uplifting story’, adding: ‘So importantly, this wonderful film gives us back hope.’

It’s a sentiment, echoed by Cat, who notes, ‘I want my film to be about hope and supporting each other.

‘I want it to be helpful for those left behind.’

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