Evangeline Lilly reveals she has brain damage after hitting her head in fall | Film
Evangeline Lilly revealed she suffered brain damage months later after suffering a concussion when she fainted and fell face down on a rock.
The 46-year-old Canadian actor, known for his roles in Lost, The Hobbit movies and the Marvel Cinematic Universe, took to Instagram to share the “bad news” video, one of many updates he has shared since suffering a traumatic brain injury (TBI) in May when he fainted at the beach and hit his head on a rock.
Lilly said in the video that a recent brain scan revealed that “almost every area in my brain is operating at reduced capacity.”
“So I have brain damage from the TBI and possibly other factors,” he said. “But my job now is to get to the bottom of it with the doctors and then start doing the hard work to fix it, which I’m looking forward to because I feel like all I’ve done is hard work.
“But that’s okay. The cognitive decline I’ve experienced since smashing my face has helped me slow down and end my 2025 on a more relaxing note.”
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She said in the caption that she found it “comforting to know that my cognitive decline is not just pre-menopausal, and disturbing to know what an uphill battle it will be to try to reverse the deficits.”
Marvel co-star actor Michelle Pfeiffer wrote: “You are a warrior. Nothing, not even this, can defeat you, my friend.”
At the time of the accident, Lilly shared photos of her bloody face after the injury and explained what happened in Substack. “I pull my face away from the sand and breathe. My mouth and nose are filled with blood,” he wrote. “My partner says I look dead when I faint. He’s so scared. My eyes roll back and all life leaves my body.”
He described how he had suffered fainting spells since childhood, and how doctors initially believed it was due to hypoglycemia, but it was later ruled out.
“I have come to believe that this ‘exit’ was a result of my little soul reaching the limit of what it felt it could handle in this life and ‘leaving the building,’ so to speak,” he wrote.
But she also shared her gratitude, writing, “It might seem crazy looking at my face and my busted tooth, but I’m so grateful I fainted. I needed a reset.”
Lilly has taken a break from acting for three years, and her last role was as superhero Hope van Dyne, or the Wasp, in the 2023 Marvel movie Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantamania. he told Variety In a statement made in June He said that he “does not actively do any work in the industry” and that he now “devotes my time to my humanitarian work and writings”.
