Martine McCutcheon says she was 'completely in denial’ as she shares health update

Martine McCutcheon admitted she was "completely in denial" after receiving a life changing diagnosis. The Love Actually star said she cried when it eventually sank in, thinking "how different things could have been".

The former EastEnders actress learned she had ADD (attention deficit disorder) after her brother Laurence's death. Martine, 48, who also has ME (chronic fatigue syndrome) confessed she found it hard to get out of bed after her 31-year-old sibling died with "no medical explanation" in 2022.

Martine said she'd realised there were "certain things she "looked at differently compared to other people", and other things she "found so easy" but when she received her diagnosis, she knew she'd "spent so much time trying to be a square in a round circle" and confessed: "It was exhausting."

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"It was so draining," The Sun reports she said. "It was just so hard. And in a way, I feel like I wasn't meant to find out, as sad as it was, because I did lose a lot of things in my life.

"I did struggle with a lot of things that I don't think I would have done necessarily. I think that if I'd have known before those four years ago that I had ADD, I don't know if I would have been able to have coped with it the way that I do now."

Martine continued: "I think, thank god people are being kinder and more knowledgeable about ADD and ADHD. People say, 'oh, everybody's got something these days' - but I don't think it's these days. I think we've always been around but we all blossom in different ways, and we need different things to blossom. And it all made sense.

"At first I went into I went into denial, completely into denial, because my brother had passed away. I've been diagnosed with ME, and I just thought, I can't take this diagnosis on and whatever it means. I need to just keep going at life the way that I am."

Martine said when she did "finally look at it", she "cried and cried", adding: "I grieved, and it was just for if only I'd known how different things could have been, how much more with ease I would have been able to have done things."

The mum-of-one, who split from her husband Jack McManus earlier this year, said she now takes thing slower, and believes the approach will see the right things come to her. Martine said she thought people could be "so busy" being distracted by things that they "miss the key opportunities that could be the making of us".