Samantha Womack “prepared” herself for death amid her breast cancer diagnosis.
The 52-year-old former EastEnders actress, who is best known for having played Ronnie Mitchell in the BBC One soap, discovered she had breast cancer in 2022 and admitted that she didn’t know if she would survive.
Samantha previously told how she had a gut feeling that something was wrong with her before she was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2022.
So she had a private ultrasound scan of her breasts which found a 4cm cancerous tumour. She was diagnosed with an aggressive grade three invasive ductal carcinoma in her right breast.
She went on to have the tumour removed, plus chemotherapy and radiotherapy treatment. The cancer had also already started to travel to her lymph nodes, and she had five nodes removed.
In a new interview, Samantaha told The Sun: “You obviously never want to lose your life, but cancer forces you to look into that cupboard. I started preparing for that from the beginning, because you do realise you could be close to possibly having that final moment.
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“I started preparing for the ‘what’s going to happen if I’ve only got six months.’ But actually, once you’ve looked in that cupboard, it’s not as scary as you think, I felt like, ‘OK, that cupboard is there, and I don’t know when it’s going to be fully open’.”
Samantha – who was told she was “cancer free” after six months of treatment – also revealed she now has “far less money” than she ever had but has realised what is important in life.
Samantha played Ronnie Mitchell in EastEnders(Image: BBC/Jack Barnes)
She said: “I’ve definitely changed as a human. If I feel like I need a break, or feel like I need a check up, or if I’m actually really not comfortable with a job or I’m uncomfortable with a group of people, I just trust my voice in my head so much more than I ever did.
“If I feel like something is wrong, not just health-wise, just anything, if I feel like something’s not a good fit for me, I’m far more confident now to be able to say, ‘Do you know what? I just don’t think this is for me. And that’s because my perception has shifted.
“My biggest paranoia and, not even paranoia, my biggest anxiety was about financial stability because I didn’t have it growing up. I had a precarious start in life and I craved that financial security that would keep me physically safe.
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“I’d be in a house, and I’d control my environment. And I think work became attached to that for me, it became about financial security. and I think what’s happened since the diagnosis is I’m in no better position financially than I was. I’m still a jobbing actor. I still, if I’ve got paid for one good job, it could be up to a year before I want to take another job or get offered another job.”
She went on: “So I’m actually turning down more work now than I ever have, and I have far less money than I’ve ever had, but it’s a weird thing for me because normally, as my bank balances disappears, that anxiety would normally keep me awake at night, and I still worry about it, but it doesn’t take over my entire body because I know I’m safe.
“I’m safe because I have me, I have my brain, I have my body, and I have my health. Don’t be distracted with all the other kinds of sparkly bits of life. If you’ve got a concern, if you’ve got any niggling worries, there are places you can go to get checked.”
