Alex Kingston ‘Hemorrhaged’ on Stage — but Continued Performing. She Later Learned She Had Cancer

Alex Kingston shared that she was diagnosed with cancer after hemorrhaging on stage during a performance that left her bleeding through her costume’s undergarments. 

The Dr. Who alum, 62, first began to feel achy and bloated 18 months ago, but as she told The Independent, “I had assumed that the way I was feeling was old age, and I just sort of accepted it,” 

“I thought, ‘OK, this is what it’s like to be in my sixties.’ But a lot of how I was feeling was to do with my illness,” Kingston shared, adding that when she noticed blood in her urine, she decided to seek medical care. But even then, she didn’t think the situation was dire: “I never went down the cancer road in my head … Even though my body was telling me there was something very seriously wrong, I kept thinking, ‘Oh, I’ve got a bad UTI or fibroids.’ ”

It wasn’t until she was performing last summer in the stage production of The Other Boleyn Girl at the UK arts celebration, Chichester Festival, when she began to bleed uncontrollably on stage. Her costume — an oversized gown and knee pads — helped her keep the audience unaware. After all, she said, “the show must go on.”

“That night on stage, I hemorrhaged,” the ER alum told the outlet, sharing she relied on the padding to get through the performance. “I just knocked my knees together and prayed that it would soak everything up.”  

“The wardrobe women were incredible,” she said. “I ran off stage and said, ‘Grab me some pads!’ We shoved some pads in my pants and I went back on stage and carried on. That was how we finished the show.”

But when Kingston did get a diagnosis, she learned she had cancer in her fallopian tubes. Although it hadn’t spread, “I had to have a hysterectomy,” she said, sharing she also underwent radiation. But as she told the outlet, although the diagnosis and treatment was “tough to accept,” she added, “the minute I had the operation, I suddenly felt like myself again.” 

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She’s now competing on the UK reality competition Strictly Come Dancing — the inspiration for Dancing with the Stars — something she said her health struggle inspired her to do, explaining, “When they approached me, I thought of that cliché: life is too short,” she says. “Go for whatever it is you secretly long to do, because if you’re not brave and you don’t do it, it won’t happen.”

And as she shares of her experience, “Womb cancer is really tricky because it is so sneaky.” But, she says, “The body does know – and that was the body saying to me, ‘Help! There’s something really wrong.’ It’s so important to seek advice and have a check-up.”