Selma Blair Shares About Her Life With MS After DWTS Exit
By Movieguide® Staff
Actress Selma Blair, known for LEGALLY BLONDE and HELLBOY, recently opened about her struggle with multiple sclerosis (MS).
Blair, 50, was diagnosed with MS in August 2018. While she has partially recovered, Blair said that it remains an everyday battle.
“I’m so much better, but it haunts my physical cells. It’s there,” she told Self magazine. “Some people wake up two years later and they’re like, ‘I’m healed! Colors are brighter!’ But I never had that moment. I just stopped having regression.”
Despite her condition, Blair said that she wants to continue to work in the entertainment industry as an actress.
“Yes, there’s a spectrum of peoples’ abilities. Absolutely. But you are what you are and it requires accommodations,” she said of disability and the industry. “There’s just so much realizing that people feel that they are a burden, and it takes away from your work. It takes away from focusing on your right to be there just as much as everyone else on the set.”
Part of her fight to establish avenues for actors and crew members with disabilities was her appearance on season 31 of DANCING WITH THE STARS.
“You know I’ve been monitored and in touch with my doctors this whole process,” Blair said while on the show. “I had these MRIs and when the results came back, it just all adds up to I can’t. I can’t. I can’t go on with the competition. I pushed as far as I could.”
Blair said that the challenge helped her process her condition.
“I think I actually need this,” Blair told Self of her time on the show. “I think it’s important for people with chronic illness or disabilities to see what they can do. I deserve to have a good time and try.”
“It’s not just so the person in the room can get up there,” she continued. “It’s so the viewer at home normalizes that the kid in the wheelchair or the braces or with cerebral palsy — whatever it is that makes them feel different than the person that can just bounce up with their heels — can be in the movies. It’s like, I can dream this. It’s built in that I can dream this. There is a way for me to get up there.”
After Blair exited the show to focus on her health, her fellow DWTS competitors shared their support.
“Selma truly is the light that we’ve all gravitated to and we’re all close now,” Wayne Brady told PEOPLE. “So, it’s a loss.”
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