Evangeline Lilly Reveals She’s Facing ‘an Uphill Battle’ After Suffering Brain Damage From a Fall

In a terrifying twist, Lost star Evangeline Lilly reveals she suffered major brain damage after falling face-first onto a boulder.

The 46-year-old actress smashed up her face when she fainted on a rocky beach in May, but recent scans show much more serious injuries.

“I do have brain damage from the TBI (traumatic brain injury) and possibly other factors,” she wrote in an Instagram post on Jan. 2.

According to Evangeline, scan results showed “almost every area in [her] brain is functioning at decreased capacity.”

She added that it was “comforting to know my cognitive decline isn’t just perimenopause, but discomforting to know what an uphill battle it will be to try to reverse the deficiencies.”

Looking ahead, she said she’ll be working with her doctors to figure out a treatment plan for the damage, “then embark on the hard work of fixing it, which I don’t look forward to.”

After she fainted in May, Evangeline — who starred as Kate Austen on all six seasons of Lost from 2004 to 2010 — posted a graphic photo of her injuries, showing bloody cuts and ugly bruises to her nose, mouth and chin.

She recalled that she “blacked out” again on the way to the hospital, but told medical staff they wouldn’t find a reason for her blacking out. “I have had ‘absent’ and fainting spells since I was a little girl,” she wrote in an online essay. “The doctors checked me for epilepsy when I was young and then settled on the idea of hypoglycemia (without doing any testing).”

Evangeline, who’s also well known for playing Hope van Dyne/Wasp in the Ant-Man movies and the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and Tauriel in two films in The Hobbit trilogy, retired from acting in 2024.

Miraculously, she claims there’s been a bright side to her health woes.

“My cognitive decline since I smashed my face open,” she shares, “has helped me to slow down and helped me to have a more restful finish to my 2025.”