02 Jul 2025 - EastEnders’ Heather Peace says cancer made her feel like a 'dead woman walking’

EXCLUSIVE: EastEnders actress Heather Peace has opened up about her breast cancer battle, gruelling chemotherapy, and how she found the strength to work throughout it.

EastEnders star Heather Peace says hearing she had breast cancer “hit her like a sledgehammer” as she reveals both she and her wife have been battling the disease. Last month, the actress announced she’d undergone surgery and was going through chemotherapy since her diagnosis in October.

Now, as she’s about to start radiotherapy, Heather tells how partner Ellie Dickinson had got the same news earlier in the year. “Her breast cancer was a smaller, aggressive lump, so she had a lumpectomy and then radiotherapy,” explained Heather, who plays Eve Panesar-Unwin in the BBC soap. “Of course then I come along with my 12 cm lump, absolutely ginormous, and mastectomy, chemotherapy, just about to go into radiotherapy. She’s like ‘Even that you have to do bigger’. It’s like ‘Hold my beer’.”

Parents to Annie, 10, and eight-year-old twins Jesse and Lola, the news was devastating to the pair. “There was no processing,” admits Heather.

Finding her own lump after noticing a change in her nipple, Heather admits she tried putting off getting checked because of her EastEnders filming schedule. Encouraged by wife Ellie to go straight away, they were shocked to discover Heather had breast cancer within just three hours of seeing a doctor.

“I swear everybody looked at me, it might be my imagination, but I felt like a dead woman walking,” admitted Heather. “I honestly did because it was so big and so quick that they told us and the seriousness and gravity with which I was told.”

It came just as Heather was about to begin filming big New Year scenes which saw Eve marry Suki Panesar (played by Balvinder Sopal) in a historic lesbian wedding. Still reeling from the news, Heather called her bosses to tell them, who told her she didn’t need to come in. But Heather was determined to film the scenes, to give a “full stop” to the story, fearing she would die.

Enduring a gruelling three-week wait for her CT scan results, she said was “the scariest of her entire life” and all she could think about was dying and leaving her young family behind. “I looked at everything I’d done, everybody in my life - my kids, my wife, equal marriage coming in, crazy amounts of stuff - and I felt my goodness, I’ve really packed it in and it’s ok. And actually I’m a bit tired. Those were my honest thoughts. My only concern was breaking anybody else’s heart. I can tell you from the bottom of my heart that was the only thing that bothered me.”

Bradford-born Heather, who previously appeared in London’s Burning and Waterloo Road, breathed a sigh of relief when scans showed her cancer hadn’t spread but she would have to undergo major surgery and aggressive chemotherapy. On November 29 she had a left breast mastectomy and immediate reconstruction. After doubts about having an implant put in - Heather says she’s delighted with the results and praised her surgeon for being an “artist”.

“The idea of an implant just gave me the ick,” explained Heather. “You have the option to use your own body material but that can’t happen for a year and it involves incisions in your stomach, bottom. Much bigger operation. Then they bring out the implants and you’re feeling these things. It was Ellie who said ‘I know for you that you wouldn’t cope without a breast as such.’ “So they said if you don’t get on with it we can take it out but I have got on with it. The level of care in the aesthetic, knowing how that can affect a woman mentally. I didn’t realise how much that part of me meant.”

https://www.mirror.coDOTuk/tv/tv-news/eastenders-heather-peace-says-cancer-35489909

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Heather Peace 💙

@heatherpeace

If only at midnight, at the beginning of 2021, we could put a stop to this whole shit show of a year.

Wake me up with the jab please.

When we can enjoy being together again.

Happy New Year dearest peeps. xxx

#livemusic #thearts #festivals #musicvenues #life #theatre

12:47 PM · Dec 31, 2020

https://x.com/heatherpeace/status/1344746988005437440

Good grief, another Lezza.....

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