Reading Time: 3 minutes
Evangeline Lilly has revealed something very personal and seemingly very troublesome to her fans and followers.
The veteran actress posted on social media this week she has brain damage after suffering a concussion last year when she fell into a boulder.
“I’m entering into this new year, the Year of the Horse, with some bad news about my concussion,” the Marvel star said 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. And the results came back from the scans [and] showed that almost every area in my brain is functioning at a decreased capacity.”
Lilly is best known for her roles on ABC’s Lost and in the Ant-Man movie franchise.
She said in a Substack post back in May that she had “fainted at the beach. And fell face first into a boulder,” adding at the time that she has experienced “fainting spells since I was a little girl.”
In this new update, Lily explained that “my job is to get to the bottom of that with doctors and then embark on the hard work of fixing it, which I don’t look forward to because I feel like hard work is all I do.
“But that’s okay. My cognitive decline since I smashed my face open has helped me to slow down and helped me to have a more restful finish to my 2025.”
Lilly wrote in the caption to her post:
“Verdict’s in… I do have brain damage from my [traumatic brain injury]. Comforting to know my cognitive decline isn’t just peri-menopause, discomforting to know what an uphill battle it will be to try to reverse the deficiencies. Thank you all for always asking, for always caring, and for your continued prayers.”
Aside from her aforementioned roles, the actress also played Tauriel in Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit trilogy, appearing in the latter two films The Desolation of Smaug and The Battle of the Five Armies.
“You are a warrior,” Lilly’s Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania co-star Michelle Pfeiffer remarked under her friend’s post, adding a heart emoji and writing: “Nothing — not even this will defeat you my friend.”
In a social media post last June, Lilly said she was taking a break from acting for the foreseeable future and wrote:
“Stepping away from what seems like the obvious choice (wealth and fame) can feel scary at times, but stepping into your dharma replaces the fear with fulfillment. I might return to Hollywood one day, but, for now, this is where I belong.”
