Paul Bhattacharjee as Bendick and Meera Syal as Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing, staged last summer; the Splash Point at Seaford in East Sussex where Bhattacharjee’s body was found on July 12

London, Nov. 15: A memorial service is to be held in London on December 1 for the 53-year-old actor Paul Bhattacharjee, whose inquest yesterday confirmed that he took his own life because he was very depressed after being declared bankrupt.

Although Bhattacharjee lived in Elephant & Castle in south London, the inquest was held in the coastal town of Eastbourne not far from the steep cliffs in Seaford, East Sussex.

This was where his body was found on July 12, two days after he went missing after attending rehearsals at the Royal Court Theatre in west London.

The body was not identified, however, until July 17 when an officer in the coroner’s office in Eastbourne read a newspaper account of the disappearance of the famous Bengali-origin actor, got in touch with Scotland Yard and confirmed the news that shocked the entire acting fraternity in Britain.

Among those who had earlier sent out tweets was the author, broadcaster and actor Stephen Fry, who once walked out from a West End play in which he was acting after experiencing severe depression.

Bhattacharjee’s relatives and close friend, who left the inquest yesterday without commenting, are still finding it difficult to cope with the manner of his death.

It has emerged that Bhattacharjee had money problems but friends say they were nothing that could not have been solved with the help of well-wishers. He was considered one of the most talented actors of his generation, had almost certainly earned handsome fees at certain points in his career — he had a bit part playing a doctor in the Bond movie Casino Royale — and could have got round the financial problems that face so many in Britain.

His girlfriend, Emma McKie, probably put her finger on the real cause when she told the court: “He had a darkness inside him that was irreparable.”

Even actors who had known Bhattacharjee for 20 or more years and thought they knew him well confided that there was a point beyond which they could not penetrate the inner shell.

A photograph of Bhattacharjee issued by the Scotland Yard when the actor went missing

McKie, who is in her twenties and met Bhattacharjee when he was acting in Much Ado About Nothing in Stratford-upon-Avon last summer, did not attend the inquest in person but sent a statement which was read out in court.

“I do believe that Paul would take his own life,” she said.

She had opened some of his letters and discovered that on July 9 — the day before he disappeared — he had been declared bankrupt. “He would not have wanted to let me down or hurt me or his friends. The bankruptcy was the final straw after a life of major highs and lows.”

Describing him as a beautiful and loving man, she said he had a close knit group of friends, including three or four he had known since his twenties. “He put on a hard exterior to those at work but protected himself. I knew about his past and the pain inside him, and I could see it in his eyes.”

On 9.16pm on July 10, she received a final text message from Bhattacharjee which made sense later.

It read: “I’m sorry.”

The East Sussex coroner Alan Craze later received an anonymous letter disclosing that Bhattacharjee’s death was deliberate and “linking it wholly and entirely to his bankruptcy”.

Recording a conclusion of suicide, Craze said: “There isn’t scope at all in this case (for any other verdict) and therefore the conclusion of this inquest will be that Gautam Paul Bhattacharjee took his own life whilst the balance of his mind was disturbed. He was extremely depressed at the time. This was a huge tragedy for a lot of people.”

Last summer after Bhattacharjee had played Albert Einstein in The Physicists, a West End production, he came out and had a brief chat with The Telegraph while walking to the Underground station. He revealed that someone was writing a play based on an encounter between Einstein and Rabindranath Tagore.

He said he was trying to rediscover the Bengali side of his roots. “I have played Einstein — now I really want to play Tagore.”