A beloved Marvel actress has suffered a “traumatic brain injury” after falling and “smashing her face open on a boulder,” which left her with a “mouth full of blood”
One iconic Marvel star has been left with “brain damage, a mouth full of blood and a busted tooth” after falling on a rock.
46-year-old actress Evangeline Lilly, best known for starring in Lost, The Hobbit films and for her role as Hope Van Dyne/The Wasp in the Ant-Man franchise, took to Instagram to share the “bad news” update.
Back in May, Lilly suffered a traumatic brain injury after fainting while on the beach and hitting her head on a boulder. She recently told fans that “almost every area” of her brain “is functioning at a decreased capacity”.
Evangeline explained: “So I do have brain damage from the TBI and possibly other factors going on, 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.”
Down in the caption, the actress said she finds it “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.”
Fellow Marvel star Michelle Pfeiffer told her she is a “warrior” and “nothing with defeat” her.
When the incident first occurred, Lilly – who has experienced fainting spells since she was a child – wrote about the accident on Substack: “I pull my face from the sand and take a breath. My mouth and nose are full of blood. My partner says that when I black out, I look like I die.”
“He gets very afraid. My eyes roll back in my head and all life leaves my body. 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.”
Evangeline said that it was “crazy looking at her face and busted tooth,” but she’s feeling “grateful” for the black out as she “needed the reset”.
Lilly has been on a hiatus from the acting industry for three years and told Variety in June 2025 that she is “devoting her time to humanitarian work and my writing.”
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