The Happy Valley actor Sarah Lancashire has spoken about the effects of her “most terrible” menopause she felt while she was being recognised at the National Television Awards last week.
Lancashire, who was given the special recognition award for her work on Coronation Street, Last Tango in Halifax and as Sgt Cawood in the BBC One crime drama Happy Valley, said she needed two fans on her at the ceremony to help combat her hot flushes.
In an interview with the Mail on Sunday she said the fans were “pretty much on my face the whole time”.
She said: “I brought one of my closest friends with me and his job was to keep an eye out for the cameras and if it looked like they were going to pan across to us, then he’d let me know so I could hide them.”
The 58-year-old said she also experienced brain fog. She said she had gone shopping in the supermarket when her mind went blank and she couldn’t remember what she had gone for. “It just comes over you all of a sudden.”
She added: “I can’t remember things that happened 30 years ago either.”
The actor is the latest public figure to speak publicly about the effects of the menopause.
Davina McCall, the former Big Brother host who has since presented a documentary about the effects of the menopause, previously said she thought she would have to stop broadcasting because of her brain fog.
Speaking to the Sun in October 2022, she said she had been working with the celebrity interior designer Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen and had forgotten his name.
“I thought I was going to have to give up my job – and I love my job.
“If I had spoken to my production team about it, if I hadn’t felt so ashamed of what was happening to me, I could have said to my producer: Look, I’m a bit forgetful at the moment, can you just keep saying people’s names in my ear.
“Or put a strategy in place that could have supported me. But I thought I was going mad.”
In December, the actor Kathy Burke told the Observer she had experienced “pretty dark, suicidal thoughts” in her early 50s, which she linked to menopause. Unable to take hormone replacement therapy (HRT) because of other medication she was on, Burke said she had struggled for years.
Lancashire is taking HRT but said it had not been working well for her.
The menopause normally takes place between the age of 45 and 55. It can cause symptoms including anxiety, mood swings, brain fog and hot flushes. The effects can also be felt during perimenopause, when periods become less regular but do not stop.
