Welsh actor Craig Russell was feeling fit, healthy and on top of the world as he played Marc Antony in Netflix ’s Queen Cleopatra.
But just seven months later he was being sedated for an operation he didn’t know if he would wake up from.
The 45 year-old had noticed the vision in his left eye and hearing were both worsening, and the migraines he’d suffered with since his teenage years also appeared to have returned with a vengeance. Or so he thought.
Other out-of-character things had begun to happen too, prompting the star to visit his doctor this January.
“Just before Christmas, I walked into the spare room and I couldn’t remember how to get out,” says Craig.
“There was only one door, it wasn’t as if I had multiple exits to choose from. Then, a week later, I was driving around a roundabout on a road I knew well and took a wrong turn. My son asked where I was going. I had no idea and he had to direct me home. This started to happen repeatedly.”
Convinced his symptoms were anxiety, a virus or migraines, Craig was caught completely unaware when his GP revealed he was going blind in his left eye.
“She looked at the lower left quarter of my eye and instantly told me I’d need a CT scan.”
Fitness-loving Craig, who describes himself as an eternal optimist, says the thought that anything was seriously wrong never crossed his mind. Even when the scan revealed a mass and he was called in for an MRI, he still didn’t worry.
“I’ve always been very positive,” he says. “I just thought ‘ah well, I am 45, maybe I finally need glasses’.”
Ultimately, the issue was far more serious. Doctors found a tumour the size of a lime in his brain, which they believe had been growing for 15 years.
“I got a call to say: ‘We need to get this out ASAP’,” says Craig. “It was totally unexpected. I was very teary when I told my wife, Kate – and that they didn’t know if it was cancerous or not. But she was amazing, saying, ‘we will win this’.”
The actor, who lives in Falmouth, Cornwall, with Kate, and their two sons, Teddy, eight, and Henry, five, was told he needed a lifesaving operation to remove his tumour.
“I was warned I could die during the procedure because it was so complicated. But if it wasn’t removed, it could cause seizures and strokes.
“I put my head in my hands thinking ‘flipping heck’, but I had to do it. Not for me, but for Kate and my kids.”
On the morning of the operation in March, at Plymouth’s Derriford Hospital, surgeons spent six hours painstakingly removing the back of Craig’s skull.
“It had been touching the tumour. Once that was out, they put my head back together with 55 staples.”
Craig smiles as he recalls his first conversation after waking up with Kate, who he’s been married to for 12 years.
“I told her I was fine and not to tell me what happened in Happy Valley. I hadn’t caught up with the ending and I didn’t want to know.” A week-long stay in hospital followed, before Craig and his family received the good news that the whole tumour had been removed and had been benign. But Craig was not out of the woods yet.
“I’d gone back briefly to hospital because Kate had noticed a staple was letting out fluid and the doctors realised there was a large swelling on my head.
“Fluids had started to build up inside.”
To get the swelling under control, Craig was told to move around as much as possible amid fears that more invasive options, like a lumbar drain, could lead to a serious infection.
“I walked every day, lifted weights and ate plenty of anti-inflammatory foods,” he says. “It worked, because when I returned, my surgeon told me the swelling had gone. I was over the moon.”
Two months on, Craig is starting to feel much more himself. His hearing has returned and the vision in his left eye is slowly improving. His migraines have completely disappeared. And although he will need to have an MRI scan every six months for the next decade to check the tumour hasn’t returned, he is, understandably, very relieved.
Craig says he couldn’t have got through his terrifying ordeal without the support of the “amazing” NHS staff, his family and his friends, who even set up a Go Fund Me page to help him.
“Kate has made both our sons feel completely safe throughout all of this and I don’t know what I would have done without her,” he says, emotionally.
“It will be a while before I can drive again, but I’m looking forward to eventually going back to work. I am so pleased I was feeling fine during the making of Queen Cleopatra. Playing Marc Antony was amazing, he’s an incredible character.
“I am so grateful my GP sent me for a brain scan. If she hadn’t, I might not be here now – I could have had a seizure while driving the children to school. It doesn’t bear thinking about.”
* Craig is in Netflix’s Queen Cleopatra, streaming now. He is patron of charity Joseph’s Smile (josephssmile.org), which helps families fundraise for medical treatment for their children
