Paris Jackson 'used meat cleaver and rang suicide hotline'

PARIS JACKSON is recovering in hospital in Los Angeles after cutting her right forearm with a meat cleaver and calling a suicide hotline, according to TMZ.com.

The 15-year-old daughter of the late Michael Jackson had attempted to harm herself before, according to a source, but this time it was much more serious. "It was not a cry for help," the source told TMZ, which also claims she left a suicide note.

The Los Angeles Times reports that she may have attempted to take her own life after being refused permission to attend a Marilyn Manson concert due to take place tonight.

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On the evening before the emergency, she tweeted the opening lines from the Beatles song Yesterday: "All my troubles seemed so far away... now it looks as though they're here to stay." She also asked her one million Twitter followers: "I wonder why tears are salty?"

As the LA Times says, Paris captured the world's imagination with an impromptu tearful eulogy at the end of the public memorial for her father following his death on 25 June 2009.

But the shy girl we saw then has come out of her shell. She has been working on her first film, Lundon's Bridge and the Three Keys, and her name appears increasingly in the gossip columns.

Only on Monday, she accidentally started a bizarre rumour after reading that Matt Smith was quitting Doctor Who and tweeting: "omg I wanna be The Doctor... They said any age and gender, right?"

Within hours, the Daily Star had reacted with a front page headline: 'Jacko's Girl Lined Up To Be New Dr Who'.

Paris responded in a tweet sent shortly before she was taken into hospital: "That conversation escalated quickly."

Her mother, Debbie Rowe, told the CBS television show Entertainment Tonight that Paris "has a lot going on". As well as school exams, and the approach of the fourth anniversary of her father's death, she and her brother, Prince, are possible witnesses in the Jackson family's civil lawsuit against AEG Live.

The family are accusing the entertainment company of negligently hiring Dr Conrad Murray to help the singer sleep in the run-up to a planned series of concerts at the O2 in London in 2009. Murray is still serving out the four-year prison sentence he received in November 2011 for involuntary manslaughter.

As one commenter, Melissa Roy, posted beneath The Times report of the suicide attempt, "It is tough being a 15 year old girl. Amplify that by about 500 when you're Michael Jackson's kid."