Alex Kingston has said that she "wasn't reading the signs" from her body before being diagnosed with uterine cancer.
The actress, best known for her roles in Doctor Who and ER, had revealed last year that she had undergone a hysterectomy and radiation therapy.
"I hadn’t realised that uterine cancer was a cancer that didn’t get much airtime", Kingston told Prima magazine. "I think it’s probably because on the whole, it is a cancer where if you recognise something is wrong, your body is able to tell you. And if it’s caught early enough, it is survivable".
She continued: "Because I’m such a positive person, even though my body was trying to tell me that something was very wrong, I wasn’t reading the signs".
"I thought that all the things such as the bloating and weight gain, or injuries not healing properly, were because of my age", she added. "I thought, 'This is what it’s like to be in your 60s, and it’s just part and parcel of getting older’.
"It was only when I was doing a play and I started haemorrhaging on stage that I realised, ‘Oh there’s something going on’".
"But even then, I thought maybe I’d got a burst fibroid. I never, ever went down the cancer road, so it was a shock".
Alex Kingston had revealed her cancer diagnosis while she was a contestant on Strictly Come Dancing with professional dancer, Johannes Radebe.
"I kept it quiet for a long time. I’m quite a private person and I felt, ‘Why should I talk about my cancer?’ and also on Strictly, I thought ‘I don’t want my journey to be about my sickness’.
"I wanted it to be about going forwards and life affirmation. But then I realised when I started to get responses from people that, actually, this is important", she added. "If nothing else, it’s important to encourage people that if their body is behaving in a slightly unusual way, don’t just write it off as being old or suddenly becoming gluten intolerant".
"It could be something else and to go and have it checked. So I feel now that it was a good thing that I opened up about it".
Alex Kingston also responded to a scathing comment made by judge, Craig Revel Horwood following her performance in the Halloween episode, where she danced a Salsa number to Horny by Hot 'n' Juicy and Mousse T. A performance which Horwood said looked like a woman having a "midlife crisis".
Despite the widespread condemnation over the remark, Alex Kingston claimed she was unaware of Horwood's comments.
"When I did the Strictly Halloween Horny number, I wasn’t fully aware of the scathing critique Craig had given me about looking like a woman who is having a midlife crisis".
"I didn’t realise that he was saying it or know about the follow-through in terms of people saying, ‘That’s just outrageous, how dare you say something like that?’".
"It was a little mean-spirited for Craig to say that and also I just felt like it’s exactly the opposite of what I’m trying to advocate", she stated. "It’s like, no, if you want to dance and swing a devil’s tail around and you’re in your 90s, do it. I mean, this is your life. So live it!".
"I’ve never spent time thinking about my age", the actress added. "I know I’m getting older, but I do try to just live in the moment. And I’ve never felt like I have to subscribe to the norms or the rules that have been set about how one should behave at a certain age"
"I’ve always been like that, even with how I choose to dress, never following or conforming to whatever the fashion of that particular year is supposed to be".
"I’ve always found my own style, which is an expression of me and who I am. In a sense, I’ve also applied that to how I live day to day and to ageing".
