Matildas star Mary Fowler reveals her darkest moment: ‘It still changes my life, I’m still dealing with it’
The Matildas star opens up about the depth of her mental health struggle, and gives a rare insight into her relationship with boyfriend Nathan Cleary.
The scene was as glamorous as one might expect. Australian soccer player Mary Fowler, striding down a Paris Fashion Week runway in late September, all purpose and poise.
She was the first footballer ever to grace that catwalk, and the esteemed company she was in included actor Helen Mirren and model Kendall Jenner.
Little did anybody know that, behind that glossy facade, Fowler was struggling with … well, some issues. As she tells Stellar with self-deprecating humour, things culminated in her having what she calls “a Mary day”.
“It was a bit overwhelming, the actual day,” Fowler reveals from her apartment in Manchester, UK, where she has been based since 2022.
“I was in hair and make-up from 2pm, and the show wasn’t until 9pm. It was a long day, and I had so many things go wrong.”
Among the myriad issues on the day, Fowler ripped her dress en route to the venue. After that, she misplaced her phone.
“I was surprised by the time we got to the runway that I felt calm,” she admits.
“It was a big moment for me. I’m just happy I was able to enjoy it, and not give in to the pressures of having to walk or look a certain way. I went out there and I was myself.”
Being authentic is important to Fowler. Which may explain why she is so nonchalant when I confess that I’m conducting this interview (at home in Australia) in my pyjamas.
There’s simply no front with her, which is especially admirable given how dramatically her life has changed in the past two years.
Fowler made her debut for the Young Matildas – Australia’s under-20 women’s soccer team – in 2018, aged just 15. At 16 she was named for the Matildas squad in the 2019 FIFA Women’s World Cup, though she didn’t play, then made her mark at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021.
But despite her successes in the years before the 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup – which was hosted by Australia, and turned the Matildas into homegrown heroes – you would have been hard-pressed to find many outside soccer’s passionate but (at least then) fairly small fan base who would have known her name, let alone recognised her on the street.
That’s not the case anymore. Australia fell in love with the Matildas, whose plucky performance during the World Cup tournament transformed not just their stature, but the profile of women’s sport in this country.
Fowler, too, walked away from that experience transformed – both on the pitch and off.
Before the World Cup, Fowler had 40K followers on Instagram.
That soon grew to 300K and is now more than 450K. In 2023, she was the second most Googled Australian (after her teammate and captain Sam Kerr). A Barbie doll was created in her likeness.
There’s no doubt that young people around the world looked to Fowler, inspired by her success, and thought to themselves, that’s what I want.
Recognising this, and while still only 22, Fowler decided to provide them with insight, advice and an honest account of how she got here by telling a story that’s about far more than her sporting career.
Inspired by journalling all her life, Fowler penned her first memoir. Bloom centres on her teenage years, and is written in a motivational tone as it charts how a girl growing up in Far North Queensland to a Papua New Guinean mother and an Irish father, who dreamt of competing at the Olympics as a runner (but also harboured hopes of becoming an actor and a hairdresser) ended up playing soccer as a Matilda.
Fowler also opens up about her mental health struggles. She has never been shy about them; in fact, she pulled out of friendlies against Brazil and Taiwan a year ago, citing mental and physical fatigue.
Yet Bloom, and this interview, mark the first time she is revealing the true nature of what she’s grappled with, particularly since her career began to consume every waking hour.
As Fowler points out in her book, she may appear cool and confident on the pitch (or catwalk), but she has had to contend with moments of searing self-doubt, and emotional darkness.
“The book wouldn’t have made sense if I didn’t include the part about mental health, because the rest of my life doesn’t make sense unless I’ve touched on that,” she tells Stellar.
“It was such a life-changing journey for me. It still changes my life. I’m still dealing with it.”
Fowler’s athletic prowess took her to France at the age of 17, to play for Montpellier HSC. She writes that while moving to one of the most popular tourist destinations in the world may seem exciting, once she was there she began to endure one of the most trying periods of her life.
Away from family and friends, in a country where she didn’t speak the language and felt the pressure of expectations to perform in a difficult environment, she began to self harm.
She found no relief, she writes, and with her emotional agony unabated, she started having suicidal thoughts.
Just before turning 20, she reveals, she came close to taking her own life.
Fowler now explains that she feels comfortable sharing this deeply personal story because she has since sought and received help from mental health professionals. She also credits her friends and family, who provided a solid support network in whom she came to realise she could confide.
And while it may seem counterintuitive, a shift in focus away from football helped her thrive again – both physically and mentally.
“When I was in high school, we got asked to write down what your dream is,” she starts.
“A boy in our class wrote: to be happy. I thought that was ridiculous. I was like, ‘Oh, you’re not very ambitious …’ But now I’m at the point where I think that’s the right answer.
“Too many people, including myself, go after what looks good or what will bring in the most money.
“And I understand that you need money in order to live a certain life.
“But at the same time, I think a lot of people make life decisions that disregard what makes them happy.
“If people led with that a bit more, and led with what their heart is trying to tell them, then maybe they would live with a few less regrets.”
Now Fowler has written the kind of book she wishes she could have read when she was a lost teenager, particularly while the experience of being one remains fresh in her mind. Besides, she trusts the purpose of her profile is to shine a spotlight on her head rather than her boot.
“I’m a bit anxious about people reading that and maybe seeing me a bit differently,” she admits.
“But that’s OK, because this is more real and it’s authentic to who I am as a person. Every single person has their struggles. I believe it makes it worse when we don’t own up to that.
“I feel like I’ve really healed from that time,” she adds.
“But I can’t lie and say that it doesn’t still affect me. Trying to understand how I got into that position, I was doing research online about the current statistics in Australia around mental health and suicide.
“It blew my mind how big those numbers are. It really connected with me that, in a way, I could easily have been one of those statistics.”
Yet among the lows, there have been incredible highs achieved on a global stage. Take that life-changing World Cup.
The 2023 tournament will always hold a special place in Fowler’s heart because of what she and her teammates achieved. But it also marks the moment she started dating her partner, Penrith Panthers NRL star Nathan Cleary.
On the morning of the Matildas’ first game against Ireland in July 2023, Fowler and Cleary – who had met months prior at an Adidas event – went on their first date, meeting for a takeaway coffee and a walk.
In Bloom, Fowler writes that Cleary’s emergence in her life, just as she was competing in the biggest and most important matches of her career, helped her feel calm on the field.
Rather than focusing on the pressure of playing in what would become the most-watched television event in Australian history, she was replaying moments with him in her head – and, like so many people starting to fall for somebody, trying to deny her true feelings for him.
As Fowler looks back at that period of her life, she tells Stellar she is grateful they could let their relationship develop in a cone of privacy.
“I have so many positive feelings about the tournament itself. But then, outside of it, it was such an exciting time as well,” she says with a smile.
“We met up quite a few times during, and I don’t think we really thought about it ever getting out. I think we’re both really grateful that it came out after.”
When it did, Fowler admits, she “struggled quite a bit” with the intensity of the attention. “Nathan has a bit more experience with being in the media,” she adds.
“I had never really had that. The growth I had from the World Cup was already one thing I was trying to get used to. Then adding all the talk about our relationship … it was a lot.
“The introvert in me was screaming. But it was really nice to be able to speak about that with him, and accept that that’s just how it is.
“We either deal with it or we don’t. We both decided we would rather not let other people’s opinions have any effect on how we feel about each other.”
So Fowler decided to be forthcoming and authentic about their relationship, just as she is with her mental health.
Cleary features in her Instagram posts as well as her book, and earlier this month she sat front row to cheer on the 28-year-old as he played for the Kangaroos in the UK.
“I’ve become a lot more comfortable with expressing my love and just being a lot more present with him, and with others, when people are watching,” she says.
“Something I really appreciate in our relationship is that – although we’re both professional athletes – most of our talk about sport is the mental side. Nathan has been so helpful with that. He is almost like a role model for me. I draw inspiration from what he does, because we are both such different athletes.”
In April, Cleary helped her face a new challenge. During a semi-final match for Manchester City, Fowler’s club in the UK’s prestigious Women’s Super League, she ruptured the anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) in her right knee.
Surgery was required; so too was having to learn how to kick a ball again.
“It was a new experience for me, because I’ve never had a long-term injury,’ she tells Stellar, adding that she’s on track to return to the field early next year.
“At the same time, I can’t say it’s been the worst thing in the world for me. Because I’m someone who really enjoys life outside of football. There is more to life than football. And it hasn’t taken me this injury to realise that. I already know that.”
The forced break from sport also gave her the chance to focus more on the release of Bloom. As to what lies ahead beyond that, it isn’t football that immediately comes to mind.
“I’d really love to go into the mental health space, working with youth,” she reveals.
“I’ve always wanted to open my own cafe, and now the vision has become more clear. I’d love to integrate the cafe into the youth hub. It’s a vision I really am aiming for now.”
In the meantime, Fowler says, “I’d really like to finish my [soccer] career knowing I’ve given all I could to the sport, and to bettering myself. I want to finish knowing I made the most of the lifestyle that football gives me.”
Asked what, exactly, “bettering” herself entails, she says she envisions her ambitious 15-year-old self, known to friends and family as Maz or Mazza.
“I love kids. I love being around them, I can’t wait to hopefully have some of my own.
“So I do sometimes think about: if I was there with my younger self, would we get on?” she says.
“I think the person I’m becoming is someone she’d enjoy being around.
“That makes me feel like I’m in a good place – that I haven’t strayed too far from who I was when I was younger.
She definitely wouldn’t have put on paper half the things I’ve done.”
Bloom by Mary Fowler ($36.99, Penguin) is out Tuesday.
If you or someone you know needs help, call Lifeline on 131 114 or visit lifeline.org.au
See the full shoot and cover story with Mary Fowler in Stellar, via The Sunday Telegraph (NSW), Sunday Herald Sun (Victoria), The Sunday Mail (Queensland) and Sunday Mail (SA).
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Originally published as Matildas star Mary Fowler reveals her darkest moment: ‘It still changes my life, I’m still dealing with it’
