Actress Evangeline Lilly gave fans an update on Friday regarding her health after suffering an accident in May that caused her to hit her head on a boulder in Hawaii.
“It’s late on January 1, the first day of 2026, and I’m entering into this new year—the year of the horse—with some bad news about my concussion,” Lilly, 46, began in an Instagram video. “A lot of you asked how I’m doing. A lot of you have inquired about the brain scans that you heard I got.”
The “Ant-Man and the Wasp” star then revealed that she experienced a traumatic brain injury (TBI) when she hit her head. “The results came back from the scans, and almost every area in my brain is functioning at a decreased capacity,” she said. “So I do have brain damage from the TBI, and possibly other factors going on.”
Lilly continued: “Now, my job is to get to the bottom of that with the doctors, and then embark on the hard work of fixing it,” adding, “which I don’t look forward to because I feel like hard work is all I do.”
The actress first shared news of her accident in May in a Substack post. “I fainted at the beach and fell face-first into a boulder,” she wrote at the time. “At the hospital, the nurses and doctor went straight into action, more determined to find the cause of my blackout than to stitch up the hole punctured into my face by the rock. I smiled wryly at them. ‘You won’t find anything,’ I said with a woozy voice.”
In the post, the “Lost” actress said that she’s had fainting spells since she was a kid. Doctors ruled out epilepsy and told her it was hypoglycemia (low blood sugar). However, Lilly said that as she got older, other health issues arose and after extensive blood work, hypoglycemia was also ruled out.
Lilly did add that there has been a silver lining to all this in her Friday post.
“My cognitive decline since I smashed my face open has helped me to slow down and helped me to have a more restful finished 2025,” she said. “This was the calmest, most restful Christmas holiday I have had, maybe since I had children, so 14 years ago. So that’s a good thing.”
Lilly continued: “[I’m] feeling extraordinarily grateful and blessed to be able to play one more day, one more year on this beautiful living planet. That is my concussion update,” she said, adding “Thank you all for caring.”
Before the accident, Lilly announced that she was “stepping away” from Hollywood in June 2024. Her last screen performance was in “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania” in 2023.
Read the original article on syracuse.com.