Former Emmerdale actress Gemma Oaten has told how bullying left her “feeling like a shell” and drove her to anorexia.

The soap star said she was a happy tomboy who excelled in school and enjoyed sports, but it “all went wrong” when at just 10 years old she began being picked on by her classmates.

Choking back tears, she said: “I think unfortunately the green-eyed monster set in for a lot of people who I thought were my friends, and life just turned on its head.

“I remember thinking I didn’t understand why people were treating me this way, and it just started with name calling, with being excluded in the canteen.

“The lads were always my good friends, but I felt as though I couldn’t hang out with them because I’d be judged.

“And I remember thinking the less of me there was, the less of me there was for them to hurt. And hence the anorexia started.”

In an anti-bullying YouTube video the actress, who played Rachel Breckle in the ITV soap, said her parents realised something was wrong and took her to the doctor.

Gemma as Rachel Breckle in Emmerdale (ITV)
Gemma as Rachel Breckle in Emmerdale (ITV)

But medics decided her weight was not low enough to warrant treatment and she was sent back to school. Her condition deteriorated and she eventually spent a year in a children’s psychiatric unit.

Gemma said the bullying took a huge psychological and emotional toll on her.

She said: “One thing I always wished, and it sounds really bizarre, but I always wished they just beat me up.

“Because there were no physical scars I didn’t have a way of explaining or articulating what was going on with the mental abuse and the mental bullying. The only way I felt I could control it was within myself – the less there was physically and the more weight I lost, the less there was of me to hate.

“It left me feeling like a shell. The bullying knocked all sense of self worth out of me, it knocked all self confidence out of me, it made me depressed. The bullying almost ruined my life.”

She made the comments in a video put together by the Diana Award charity to promote its new anti bullying campaign.