Evangeline Lilly has shared her experience of sustaining brain damage that has impacted ‘almost every part of her brain’ after a traumatic brain injury in May 2025.
The Antman actress suffered a severe concussion last year following a head-first fall into a boulder. In a recent health update on January 2, she disclosed the significant and lasting impact of the injury.
In an Instagram video, the Lost star, 46, informed her followers about some ‘bad news’ regarding her recovery and opened up about her healing process.
“I’m entering into this new year, the Year of the Horse, with some bad news about my concussion,” the Marvel star stated in the 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.”
After stepping back from acting post-incident, she revealed that the scan results indicated ‘almost every area in my brain is functioning at a decreased capacity.’
“So I do have brain damage from the TBI,” Lilly said, “and possibly other factors going on.”
Explaining what this means for her future, she added: “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.
“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.”
Despite the challenging news, Lilly expressed feeling ‘extraordinarily grateful’ and ‘blessed’, as it clarified that her symptoms were not related to perimenopause, as she initially suspected.
In the caption of her video, she wrote: “Verdict’s in…I do have brain damage from my tbi. 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. Thank you all for always asking, for always caring, and for your continued prayers.”
Lilly’s injury occurred at the beginning of summer 2025 when she fainted during a day at the beach.
During the fall, she hit a boulder, knocking out a tooth, bloodying her nose, and receiving a significant head injury. Despite the severity, she humorously remarked at the time that it was the ‘reset’ she needed.
“It might seem crazy looking at my face and my busted tooth, but I feel so grateful that I blacked out,” she wrote at the time. “I needed the reset.”
The cause of the blackout remains undisclosed, although Lilly previously mentioned experiencing frequent blackouts as a child in a Substack post.
“I have had “absent” and fainting spells since I was a little girl. The doctors checked me for epilepsy when I was young and then settled on the idea of hypoglycemia (without doing any testing),” she wrote.
“For a good chunk of my life, I went with that – hypoglycemia. It added up – my metabolism is through the roof and I metabolize sugars, particularly, with shocking efficiency.
“But, as I got older, and other health issues started to enter the picture, my doctor started doing a LOT of blood work. What was interesting was how, even after a 12-hour fast, even after blacking out, my glucose levels never came back as low. Hypoglycemia, it seemed, was being ruled out.”
“So…what was making me become so cognitively checked out that the doctors thought I might have epilepsy as a child? What was causing me to faint periodically throughout my adult life? What was MY wry smile all about?
“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. Or ‘leaves the meat suit’ might be a better way of putting it.”
Further tests were conducted, including after her 2025 blackout, but the cause remains undetermined by medics.