Karen Mulder in coma after taking overdose

Supermodel Karen Mulder is fighting for her life today after overdosing on sleeping tablets.

The catwalk star, who also headed the designer range of Guess jeans, was found by her ex-boyfriend Jean Yves Le Fur at a friend's flat where she had been staying in Paris. She was taken to the American Hospital in Neuilly where she is still in a coma.

M Le Fur said Ms Mulder was lying on the floor of the flat and not moving. He called the emergency services and doctors struggled to revive her before taking her to hospital, unconscious.

The 34- year- old Dutch- born model, with a fee of thousands of pounds per day - she has amassed £10 million from modelling for names like Chanel, Versace, Valentino and Yves Saint Laurent - has spoken openly in the past about her depression, from which she suffered for several years.

She said: "I was so bad that I couldn't get up. To even lift an arm or a leg was a terrible strain for me."

Last year she broke down in tears on French television and claimed she had been raped by former members of her model agency Elite.

She also said she was forced to sleep with people against her will to get better contracts. Among them - she claimed - was Prince Albert of Monaco. She also said her father had raped and abused her from the age of two. However, Ms Mulder later apologised for her allegations.

The producers felt they could not transmit the chat show, where the subject had been a discussion on whether the model industry exploited young girls, and destroyed the tape.

Fearful for the model's emotional state, they contacted her family. Within days, her younger sister, film actress Saskia Mulder, had taken her to hospital and her parents, Ben and Marijke, left their home in the Dutch town of Voorburg and moved into a Paris hotel to be near her.

Ms Mulder was treated in the high-security Montsouris clinic in Paris and was released from there in March. She was thought to be off medication and recovering well when the overdose took place.

Before her TV outburst she had a reputation for level-headedness. However, that all fell apart when the model known as "the blonde with class" launched the astonishing allegations.

It later emerged that she had made similar complaints to French detectives a few days earlier. The public prosecutor's office in Paris said then it was taking her story seriously.

A source at Ms Mulder's former agency, Premier Model Management, said today: "We have heard about the overdose and it's terribly sad. This has come as an incredible shock. She doesn't really work in the modelling industry any more, but occasionally we are contacted when jobs come up for her."