Coronation Street legend Beverley Callard has been diagnosed with breast cancer.
The 68-year-old received the devastating news last month - just 20 minutes before starting her new job on Irish soap opera Fair City.
Beverley - who starred on I'm A Celebrity in 2020 - has been told she will need surgery and radiotherapy.
She is also returning to the UK this weekend for tests to check whether the cancer has spread.
Beverley told RTE's Late Late Show, hosted by Patrick Kielty, on Friday: "I've had some tests just before I left the UK, and literally, 15, 20 minutes before I was in my dressing room at Fair City, getting ready to go on, and I was quite nervous and thinking, 'I hope everybody thinks I'm all right', whatever.
"And my consultant rang me and said, 'you've got to come back to the UK'. I said, 'Well, I can't possibly, I've just taken a new job'. I said 'I'm away for a month', and I was diagnosed with breast cancer."
Reassuring fans about her health battle, Beverley continued: "I'm fine, I'm absolutely fine. My head was a bit mashed for the first few days.
"It's very early stages, and I am along with thousands of other women as well.
"It's early stages, I travel back to the UK tomorrow, just for a couple of weeks, they're going to test lymph nodes and lymph glands and all that.
"But then I need an operation and some radiotherapy, and then I'm coming back to Fair City, so I will be back in just a few weeks."
Beverley quit her iconic role as Rovers Return landlady Liz McDonald in 2019 after 30 years on screen.
She began her new role as Gwen's long-lost mother Lily in Fair City last month with plans to move to County Wicklow with her husband.
Speaking about being offered the part, she told RTE: "I got asked to do it almost a year ago now, and I said, 'Oh I don't know if I can do another soap, I don't know whether I should do that'.
"And they said, 'well, just have a look at it'.
"In the UK it's quite difficult to get and so I was watching it on my computer, and I just became addicted to Fair City and I just thought, this is fantastic.
"The editing is so good. The scripts are amazing. Got my husband to have a look at it. And I said, 'I can't say no to this'."
Beverley was recently forced to hit back over accusations she had been using weight loss injections after showing off her toned figure online.
She insisted: "Listen I have worked out my whole life and I have been working my ass off, literally."
