With her loud personality and brash sense of humour, Gemma Collins is the star most people would love to have at their party.
The hilarious star became an overnight sensation after joining The Only Way is Essex as a used car salesperson in 2011.
Since then, Gemma has rarely been out of the spotlight thanks to her iconic diva antics and tumultuous on-off relationship with troubled co-star James 'Arg' Argent.
But behind the comedy and the drama, The GC - who turns 42 today - is a different person, one who has bravely faced a barrage of pain and trauma.
"The public don't know Gemma, they know 'The GC'," she explained on a Channel 4 documentary last year.
"Everyone sees me as this strong character. I'm actually a very soft, sensitive person, very few people get to see that side of me."
It is, however, a side that Gemma has bravely let fans see, sharing harrowing details of her darkest chapter in the hope that it could help someone else.
For 20 years she struggled with self-harm, revealing in her documentary, Gemma Collins: Self-Harm and Me that she used it as a 'coping mechanism' to deal with the pressures of her new-found fame.
In deeply moving scenes, the former Dancing on Ice contestant told how she first started self-harming at school and kept it a secret from those around her for two decades.
Explaining that she wanted to do the show to get some answers, Gemma said: "I don't know why I self-harmed, I don't know where it came from. I don't understand it. This is why I'm making this documentary, I want to finally put it to bed."
Speaking to fiancé Rami Hawash, she recalled how he caught her 11 years ago, when they were previously dating.
Opening up to her partner, Gemma said: "It was never about you, it was never about any of that. It was to do with me."
She continued: "I never wanted to kill myself, that never went through my head. It was like a coping mechanism for me.
"In the back of my mind because obviously we do want to go on to, you know, have a baby and stuff. I feel very happy with you and very settled with you and I think always in the back of my mind, you think, 'Oh s**t, is it going to come back?'"
Although she hasn't self-harmed since her early thirties, Gemma said she continued to hurt herself in other ways.
"After my thirties I think I went onto a different sort of harm with bad partners, bad relationships with food, it's all different types of self-harm," she added.
In her 2013 autobiography, Basically... My Life As An Essex Girl, Gemma previously told how her troubles were exacerbated when, years before finding fame, she suspected an ex-boyfriend was cheating on her.
When he pulled the plug on their two-year relationship, she turned to food and started 'self-medicating' with calories.
"Every time I felt an emotion I would eat to block it. Food gave me a high. I had always been slim so I never felt guilty," she explained, admitting she would think nothing of eating three chocolate bars in a row followed by two burgers from McDonalds.
"I started to fixate about food. It became a focus away from the grim reality of my situation. I would think about it from the minute I woke up to the minute I went to bed. I had low self-esteem. I was suffering and without realising I morphed into a bigger person," she said.
"I went from being a thin girl who never had a weight problem and was a constant size 10 to a girl who couldn't stop growing."
Gemma endured another major trauma in 2012 when she suffered a miscarriage on her landing at four and a half months pregnant.
The star, who was in a five-year relationship with a city banker at the time - didn't realise she was expecting when she started suffering crippling stomach pains.
Gemma, who has often talked about how she wants to be a mum, said on her BBC podcast: "I actually gave birth to a child, sadly, and basically the child was four months old. Basically, I had a miscarriage but obviously the baby was formed and it died in front of me."
She continued: "I'll never forget it, it was a very traumatising experience because I didn't know I was pregnant and literally I remember waking up with severe pains and my mum said to me, 'Gemma you need to go to the toilet,' and I was like, 'Honey, this is not…' I mean obviously I couldn't describe…"
Just hours later, despite being in 'utter shock', the brave star hid her pain to walk the red carpet at the National Television Awards.
However, she now finds strength in being able to share her story with other, adding: "I've been through a lot and dealt with a lot, but I'm grateful for those experiences because I can sit here today and relay them to other people."
*If you are struggling with mental health, you can speak to a trained advisor from Mind mental health charity on 0300 123 3393 or email info@mind.org.uk.
