Doctor Who and ER actress Alex Kingston says she “wasn’t reading the signs” before cancer diagnosis and hits out at Strictly judge

Doctor Who and ER actress Alex Kingston, star of Strictly Come Dancing, has spoken about how she “wasn’t reading the signs” from her body before being diagnosed with uterine cancer - and hit out at a "mean-spirited" judge on the BBC show. Kingston, 62, revealed last year how she had undergone a hysterectomy and radiation therapy and in an interview with Prima magazine said people should listen to their bodies.

“I hadn’t realised that uterine cancer was a cancer that didn’t get much airtime," she said. “I think it’s probably because on the whole, it is a cancer where if you recognise something is wrong, your body is able to tell you. And if it’s caught early enough, it is survivable. Because I’m such a positive person, even though my body was trying to tell me that something was very wrong, I wasn’t reading the signs.

“I thought that all the things such as the bloating and weight gain, or injuries not healing properly, were because of my age. I thought, ‘This is what it’s like to be in your 60s, and it’s just part and parcel of getting older’. It was only when I was doing a play and I started haemorrhaging on stage that I realised, ‘Oh there’s something going on’. But even then, I thought maybe I’d got a burst fibroid. I never, ever went down the cancer road, so it was a shock.”

Fans were left stunned when the diagnosis was revealed as Kingston took part in Strictly, alongside professional dancer Johannes Radebe. However, she said she was initially reluctant to talk about it, telling the magazine: “I kept it quiet for a long time. I’m quite a private person and I felt, ‘Why should I talk about my cancer?’ and also on Strictly, I thought ‘I don’t want my journey to be about my sickness’.

“I wanted it to be about going forwards and life affirmation. But then I realised when I started to get responses from people that, actually, this is important. If nothing else, it’s important to encourage people that if their body is behaving in a slightly unusual way, don’t just write it off as being old or suddenly becoming gluten intolerant. It could be something else and to go and have it checked. So I feel now that it was a good thing that I opened up about it.”

She also hit out at comments from judge Craig Revel Horwood in the Halloween episode of Strictly, when he referred to her Salsa to Horny by Hot ‘n’ Juicy and Mousse T as looking like a woman experiencing “a midlife crisis”.

“When I did the Strictly Halloween ‘Horny’ number, I wasn’t fully aware of the scathing critique Craig had given me about looking like a woman who is having a midlife crisis," she said. “I didn’t realise that he was saying it or know about the follow-through in terms of people saying, ‘That’s just outrageous, how dare you say something like that?’”

“It was a little mean-spirited for Craig to say that and also I just felt like it’s exactly the opposite of what I’m trying to advocate. It’s like, no, if you want to dance and swing a devil’s tail around and you’re in your 90s, do it. I mean, this is your life. So live it.”

She added: “I’ve never spent time thinking about my age. I know I’m getting older, but I do try to just live in the moment. And I’ve never felt like I have to subscribe to the norms or the rules that have been set about how one should behave at a certain age.

“I’ve always been like that, even with how I choose to dress, never following or conforming to whatever the fashion of that particular year is supposed to be. I’ve always found my own style, which is an expression of me and who I am. In a sense, I’ve also applied that to how I live day to day and to ageing.”

The April 2026 issue of Prima - featuring the interview with Alex Kingston - is on sale now.