Alert – MasterChef winner Julie Goodwin reveals the sliding-doors moment that saved her life when she thought she couldn’t go on – and how the simple act by a stranger brought her back from the brink

MasterChef winner Julie Goodwin has revealed her lowest moment and the miraculous intervention that helped save her life. 

Goodwin, who became a household name after winning the first series of the Channel 10 cooking reality show in 2009, has opened up on how seeking to capitilise on her fame led to overwork and battles with crippling anxiety and depression.

Appearing on SBS’ Insights on Tuesday night, Goodwin said she went with her husband Michael to a Central Coast Mariners A-League soccer game but had separated from him to meet some friends when a wave of despair hit. 

‘I just realised I just didn’t want to be alive anymore and so I just took myself for a walk,’ Goodwin told host Kumi Taguchi. 

‘I walked for quite a while up to a park on the waterfront.

‘I sat myself there I was just trying to work up the courage to just relieve my family of my existence.

‘I understood I would be causing grief and pain but in my mind, which was unwell, it would be the last time I would cause that pain and it would be over.’

Goodwin said what happened next was a ‘kind of divine intervention’. 

Julie Goodwin (pictured right with husband Michael left) has revealed on the SBS show Insights the lowest point of her mental health battles after winning MasterChef in 2009

‘A beautiful young couple spied me and they came and sat with me, a young man, a young lady and a dog and just said ‘you look like someone who could use some company so were’ just going to hang out here for a while’,’ she said.

‘They just talked to me about life about their children, their family we talked about dogs. 

‘I told them about my dogs and my children and just by the end of the two hours I had changed my mind.’

She rang her husband Michael and asked him to pick her up where she told him about what had happened. 

‘It was utterly shocking,’ Michael said.

‘We just spun the car around. We headed to our local hospital and presented to emergency.’

Goodwin, who revealed in her 2024 biography ‘Your Time Starts Now’ that she was sexually abused as a child and later attempted suicide as a teenager, said her conviction for drink driving in 2018 weighed heavily on her mind.

‘The shame is still very deep,’ Goodwin said after a blood alcohol reading over twice the legal limit saw her lose her licence for six months and cop a $600 fine.

‘What that did was strip me of any vestige of anything good I believed about myself.’ 

Goodwin said after winning MasterChef she ‘was inundated with amazing opportunities and jobs and events’.

‘I was frightened about saying no to anything because I didn’t know how long that would last,’ she said.

‘I took on everything that came through the door that I possibly could and what ended up happening.

Goodwin made her third appearance as a MasterChef contestant in the 2022 Fans and Favourites series 14

‘What my family got the very last dregs of me when I walked through the door at the end of a full day.’

By the end of 2019, Goodwin had authored six cookbooks, was doing a breakfast radio show and operated a cooking school, Julie’s Place Cooking School.

‘There was definitely a lot of overwhelm, overwork going on there,’ she admitted.

‘I ignored a lot of warning signs about my mental health. 

‘There was some unresolved past trauma and all of that just kind of created a perfect storm and became what I really would describe as a breakdown.’ 

Once she was admitted to hospital, Goodwin said she ‘just decided the things I had been trying to do to make things better weren’t really working’.

This led to her quitting radio in 2019 and later closing her cooking school. 

It was only three weeks after a five-week hospital stay that she got a surprise call. 

‘It was a chance to go back to MasterChef,’ she said.

After talking to her husband, two sons and psychologist, they agreed she should do it under the condition she was able to do things that looked after her mental health.

‘It sort of came along at a great time during her recovery,’ Michael said.

‘She was sort of a little bit lost having closed the business and given up radio. It gave her something to focus on and a real purpose and excitement as well.’ 

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