IN August 2022, after going off a ‘gut feeling’ while starring in a West End play and getting checked, Samantha Womack was diagnosed with breast cancer, aged 49.
And the star - known to millions for playing Ronnie Mitchell in EastEnders - had a long road ahead, one where she didn’t know what her end destination would be, and so, in a heartbreaking move, she prepared for the disease killing her.
“You obviously never want to lose your life, but cancer forces you to look into that cupboard,” Samantha told The Sun, continuing: “I started preparing for that from the beginning, because you do realise you could be close to possibly having that final moment.
"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'.”
The EastEnders star was told it was a Grade 3 invasive ductal carcinoma - one that tends to grow and spread more quickly than lower-grade cancers - and she’d neither found a lump, nor had a mammogram, but was instead guided by her intuition that something wasn’t quite right.
It was over the next gruelling few months that Samantha would undergo the arduous task of having chemotherapy, and undergoing a lumpectomy, to try and remove the cancer - a time which the star describes as “frightening.”
Samantha made her EastEnders debut on July 24, 2007, slipping into the skin of Ronnie Mitchell, a cousin of Walford tough man Phil. Less than a decade later, Ronnie and on-screen sister Roxy Mitchell - played by Rita Simons - were given the chop.
She then moved into theatre, and it was one evening after a show that Samantha went for dinner with Grease superstar Oliva Newton-John, who battled breast cancer for three decades.
Little did Samantha know at the time, but Olivia’s tragic death from the disease in 2022 would spur her on to announce her own breast cancer to her large fan base.
Sharing a picture of herself with the actress, who passed away at the age of 73, Samantha wrote: “This was the most magical of evenings. Olivia and Chloe had come to see Grease in London and we had dinner together afterwards. I was so excited and in awe, she was my childhood.”
Sam added: “I now start my own battle with this disease and am left feeling deeply moved.”
Samantha had gone to get checked while working, and she quickly got a diagnosis of a gremlin shadow, eventually diagnosed as breast cancer.
“If I hadn't gone to follow that instinct at that time, my life, well, I don't even know if I could have my life now. That's the reality,” she tells us.
Samantha continued: “My diagnosis and my treatment would have just been so, so much harder, because it had already started to travel to my lymph nodes. Early diagnosis is absolutely life changing.”
Then came the next challenge of breaking the news to her family.
The star spoke about how she told them, including her two children Benjamin and Lili-Rose, saying her initial response was to “protect” her kids from the news.
“I think it’s a very female thing to do, and you want to be like a ‘good cancer girl,’ Samantha added.
Currently, the star lives in Spain after making the move there with her Emmerdale star partner, Oliver Farnworth.
Samantha continued: “Ollie, my partner, is very gentle, so he doesn't force any kind of conversation or whatever. I mean, his way of taking care of it was just constantly coming in and trying to make nice things to eat and we’d go for a walk up the mountain every day, which was really hard after chemo, but then every day you go a little bit further, and a little bit further.
You obviously never want to lose your life, but cancer forces you to look into that cupboard
Samantha Womack
“I was just so lucky to have that experience. I think I would really struggle in a city. A lot of the women that I speak to who now go on retreats after cancer or during cancer treatment say being around nature feels very healing.”
Over the next few months, the brave star underwent treatment, and she described to us what that was like, grimacing while recalling ‘red devil chemo’ which is given that name due to its bright red appearance.
Recalling that time of her life, Samantha said: “Interestingly, the radiotherapy, I was OK with. I didn't react too badly to that. The chemotherapy that I had, I found frightening, but mainly because I was dovetailing between private healthcare.
“I wasn't insured. I cancelled my insurance during Covid. I knew I had a high grade three cancer, which means it was aggressive. So I had some savings, not a lot, but I just knew that the most important thing was to get it out ASAP, which actually I'm really glad I did because it had started to go to the lymph nodes.
“Then I went back to the NHS because they’re brilliant at cancer care, and I was treated at the Royal Marsden. But, I think for me I was the most scared then because I didn't know what was coming.
“I feared the feeling of being out of control, and red devil chemo in particular felt really frightening because they needed to sign it off and two nurses needed to administer it because it's highly toxic.
“And when you watch that colour come out of a box and see two women with masks putting it in, it does feel really frightening.
“Some people decide to go traditional with treatment, some people don't. The point is that you have as much information as you can, because then you get to tailor your treatment and your whole experience of cancer, which honestly now I wouldn't change. I wouldn't change it because I'm calmer and, I think, slightly more connected to myself than I ever have been before.”
After around six months, Samantha was told she was cancer-free - a term the star says she finds “strange.”
“I'll say I'm cancer-free as of right now, but I also know that, statistically, if you've had cancer there's probably a slightly greater risk that you'll get it again compared to somebody that hasn't had it,” she said.
And cancer most definitely changed the star’s outlook in so many different ways.
Samantha tells us she’s become more pragmatic, won’t suffer fools, and is trusting and listening to herself a lot more than she once did.
I feared the feeling of being out of control, and red devil chemo in particular felt really frightening
Samantha Womack
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.”
Samantha’s shift in perception has also altered the way she views her finances, with the star admitting to having “far less money than she ever had,” but for good reason.
She explained: “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.
“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.
“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.”
On the topic of getting checked, Samantha is trying to educate women about the importance of knowing their breast density, for a Genesis Care campaign named ‘Keep Abreast of your Breast Density.’
While mammograms are a great screening tool for many women, for those with dense breasts it is harder to spot anything out of the ordinary, and cancer can be missed.
Dense breast tissue is found in approximately half of women who are aged forty or above and worryingly, women with extremely dense breasts are six times more likely to get breast cancer than those with fatty breasts.
Discussing her mission to educate, Samantha explained: “We often think of breast cancer as something that happens to women after menopause, and that's dictated by the NHS calling us in for mammograms after the age of 50.
“But obviously we know now that cancer is now far more prevalent in all ages and breast cancer numbers are through the roof. What I love about the campaign is, as I’ve understood through my own journey, information is power.”
She praised the younger women who have been diagnosed with breast cancer for speaking out on social media, from Jessie J to EastEnders star Kara Tointon.
“Genesis Care is doing this amazing thing, where they are informing women about what dense breasts are following their mammogram, which I'd never heard of. I did loads of reading, loads of treatments, but no one had ever told me to test my breast density. And the statistics are really important. If you’re D category and extremely dense, you're six times more likely to get cancer.
We know now that cancer is now far more prevalent in all ages and breast cancer numbers are through the roof
Samantha Womack
“To get checked is probably the same price as you taking your car for an MOT, or a weekend away or, you know, and even if you’re low income, you could save up for a year and hopefully try and get enough.”
GenesisCare has also launched a new screening service where patients who have dense breast tissue can benefit from a rapid breast MRI scan for early detection of cancer. These scans, which aren’t widely available as standard screening unless you have a very high risk of breast cancer, are now available privately at GenesisCare centres in Oxford and Windsor.
