Evangeline Lilly Reveals She Was diagnosed with Brain Damage after Fall

Canadian actress Evangeline Lilly has been diagnosed with brain damage months after suffering a concussion when she fainted following a nasty fall into a boulder.

Lilly, best known for her roles in Lost, The Hobbit franchise and the Marvel Cinematic Universe, shared the news in a video posted on Instagram, one of the many updates she has shared since suffering a traumatic brain injury (TBI) in May, when she fainted on a beach and hit her head on a rock.

The 46-year-old star said that a recent brain scan had revealed that “Almost every area in my brain is functioning at a decreased capacity”.

“So I do have brain damage from the TBI and possibly other factors going on,” she noted. “But now 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.

Lilly continued, “But that’s OK. 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.”

In the caption, she pointed out that she found it “comforting to know my cognitive decline isn’t just perimenopause, discomforting to know what an uphill battle it will be to try to reverse the deficiencies”.

At the time of the accident, Lilly shared photos of her bloodied face post-injury and described what had happened on Substack. “I pull my face from the sand and take a breath. My mouth and nose are full of blood,” she wrote. “My partner says that when I black out, I look like I die. He gets very afraid. My eyes roll back in my head and all life leaves my body.”

The Marvel actress explained how she had experienced fainting spells since she was a child, with doctors initially believing it was due to hypoglycemia, which was later ruled out.

“I have come to believe that this ‘checking out’ is a result of my little soul reaching her limit of what she feels she can cope with in this life, and she ‘leaves the building,’ so to speak,” Lilly wrote.

She also shared her gratitude, noting, “It might seem crazy looking at my face and my busted tooth, but I feel so grateful that I blacked out. I needed the reset.”

Lilly has been on hiatus from acting for three years, with her last role being superhero Hope van Dyne/the Wasp in the 2023 Marvel movie "Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania".

She said in a statement in June that she was “not actively pursuing any work in the industry” and was now “devoting my time to my humanitarian work and my writing.”