Hollywood actor Kodi Smit-McPhee left blind in one eye after being too busy playing superheroes to see a doctor

The 28-year-old actor was nominated for an Academy Award for his performance in 2021 Western 'The Power of the Dog'. Now he has revealed that he developed a condition called ankylosing spondylitis - which causes inflammation and leads to pain, tiredness and stiffness - when he was 18.

This left him with problems in his left eye but was so busy making movies he put off seeing a doctor until it was too late to save his sight.

He told The Telegraph newspaper: "Ironically, I was playing a superhero in 'X-Men', and then I was doing these other action films like 'Alpha'. And I went through very tough times on those jobs ...

"I just didn’t follow up on it. You know, I was thinking too much and I couldn’t get back to the doctor. Eventually the cataract had done so much damage. It was in atrophy. So in that eye I can’t see anything."

In the interview, Kodi admits he thinks "suppressed trauma" led to his health issues after becoming a successful child actor and then seeing his parents' marriage collapse when he was a teenager.

He explained: "Looking after my family and projecting these ideas on to myself. They weren’t things that were expected of me, but while I saw it [acting] as the greatest experience of my life, I also saw it as, like, ‘Oh, this is something that I can do to save everyone'

"Everyone was splitting up and my sister moved out. My dad was home and I thought: 'Oh s***, I didn’t get to save everyone'. I only got to do it for myself and it felt very selfish. It felt like impostor syndrome."