Olivia Williams, best known for her role as Camilla Parker Bowles in The Crown, has opened up about the painful journey she endured just to get a proper diagnosis—and the lasting consequences she now faces.
In a brutally honest interview with The Times, the 56-year-old actress revealed she’ll never be cancer-free after doctors failed to catch her illness early on. Despite suffering for years, it wasn’t until 2018—after seeing 10 different doctors—that Olivia was finally diagnosed with a cancerous tumour on her pancreas.
“If someone had f—ing well diagnosed me in the four years I’d been saying I was ill,” she told the outlet, her frustration clear. Olivia explained that her symptoms were repeatedly dismissed, with many doctors brushing them off as menopause, irritable bowel syndrome, or even suggesting she was mentally unwell.
“I used that word advisedly because one doctor referred me for a psychiatric assessment,” she added. “Then one operation possibly could have cleared the whole thing and I could describe myself as cancer-free, which I cannot now ever be.”
Before her diagnosis, Olivia had been struggling with extreme fatigue, chronic diarrhoea, and aching limbs—symptoms she now knows were linked to pancreatic cancer. But instead of getting answers, she found herself misdiagnosed time and time again.
It took roughly 21 visits to different doctors before the truth was uncovered.
Since the initial tumour was removed, Olivia has continued to face new health battles. “They’ve found new metastases pretty well either just before Christmas or in the middle of a summer holiday,” she said. “Then, for three years in a row, they started appearing too close to major blood vessels to zap. So there was a period when we were just sitting and watching them grow, which is a horrible feeling.”
Despite everything, Olivia is determined to use her story to bring change. She’s now working closely with Pancreatic Cancer UK, which is the official charity partner for this year’s London Marathon. Her goal is to help fund research and improve testing methods that could lead to faster diagnoses and better survival chances.
For Olivia, the fight is far from over—but she’s turning her anger and pain into action, hoping no one else has to go through the same ordeal.
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