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The Coronation Street star has been diagnosed with breast cancer aged 68 and received the news just 20 minutes before starting her new job on Irish soap Fair City
Coronation Street icon Beverley Callard’s health woes
- Beverley Callard, best known for playing Liz McDonald on Coronation Street, has been diagnosed with breast cancer. She received the news in January 2026, just 20 minutes before she was due to start working on Irish soap opera Fair City. The actress is set to return to the UK for tests and will need both surgery and radiotherapy.
- She revealed the news on RTE on Friday, 6 February: “I’ve had some tests just before I left the UK, and literally, 15, 20 minutes before I was in my dressing room at Fair City, getting ready to go on, and I was quite nervous and thinking, ‘I hope everybody thinks I’m all right’, whatever. And my consultant rang me and said, ‘you’ve got to come back to the UK’ I said, ‘Well, I can’t possibly, I’ve just taken a new job’. I said ‘I’m away for a month’, and I was diagnosed with breast cancer.”
- This is not the first time Beverley has battled cancer as she was diagnosed with cervical cancer when she was 32. This came only 15 months after the birth of her second child, Josh. The illness resulted in a hysterectomy and years later, Beverley admitted to the Mirror that she felt it was “fate”. Bev said: “I was very ill when I was pregnant. I got cervical cancer when Josh was 15 months old. And all I could think was, ‘Oh, my God, that is fate’. You know, someone was smiling on me and looking after me.”
- In 2019, she suffered a hip injury that forced her to take a step back from her heavy workout routine. This was tough for the actress who was an aerobics instructor before finding fame on the telly.
- The star has also had some mental health woes. She had a nervous breakdown in 2009 that caused her to be admitted to a psychiatric hospital. She was still taking medication over a decade later, and told OK! in 2022: “I still have to take medication, but I’m in a really good place now, and I’m very lucky because I’ve got great doctors.”
READ THE FULL STORY – Coronation Street’s Beverley Callard’s shock breast cancer diagnosis see her take break
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