Mark Sheppard, who played Canton Everett Delaware III in Series 6 of Doctor Who, talked about how he almost lost his life at the end of last year.
The America-based English actor collapsed in his kitchen at the start of December 2023 and had “six massive heart attacks” due to a full blockage in the heart’s biggest artery. After receiving medical attention he was resuscitated four times, then spent several days in hospital and was fitted with an internal defibrillator. He said on a Comic Con panel:
“The elephant in the room – I do not have heart disease. I do not have an ongoing heart issue. The only thing that I’m at risk of is apparently sudden cardiac death. Which is kind of fun. Really, there’s nothing else I’m worried about.”
You’ve got to take the positives with the negatives, eh?
It has now been close to 13 years since Sheppard starred in The Impossible Astronaut and Day of the Moon, the opening two episodes of Series 6, and has been almost seven years since he left his most famous role as Crowley, a character he played for nine seasons, in Supernatural.
“I just had skin cancer surgery and then I had to have an abdominoplasty to take care of the eight-inch gash in the middle of my belly that completely distorted my body. So I lost a bunch of weight and got really healthy, took me about three months to get healthy, and then had an abdominoplasty,” Sheppard continued, revealing he was actually set to go to hospital on the day of his multiple heart attacks.
He began to feel unwell, decided to call off his hospital trip, and then “the next thing I know I went down like a tonne of bricks”.
His wife was present and was able to call emergency services, who had to resuscitate him before and after taking him to hospital. That let him with “the statistical possibilities” of remaining alive very low, and in his brief periods of returning to consciousness Sheppard “was very clearly aware of the fact that I was going to die”.
The good news is not only that Sheppard is still alive but he is in improved health, as demonstrated by his enthusiastic Dublin Comic Con visit earlier this year.
“So I have no heart disease. I’m really healthy. I’m better off than I was before I started,” he explained. “Mentally, it’s a little difficult. It’s an odd thing to survive when you don’t know and you lose the power to make choices and you start going I’m not done. I really don’t want to be done. I’ve got things to do. So I have a medical card and fun stuff but I’m actually fitter and healthier and three stone lighter than I was last year.”
