The actress who's become a force for wellness reveals the one choice she made that changed her odds for thriving.
Selma Blair on Progress in Medicine and Strength
Published on Feb. 14, 2025
It’s bold to say any public figure has “changed the face” of a condition, but with Selma Blair, it’s true. Since her days appearing in classics like Legally Blonde and Cruel Intentions, she’s been a strong presence on the screen—but it was her openness about her 2018 multiple sclerosis diagnosis that showed fans what she’s truly made of. “No one encouraged me to talk about it, that’s for sure,” she told us.
She’s famous for having a mind of her own. Today, the 52-year-old reveals she’s in a new space with the condition, no longer utilizing a cane or contending with slurred speech. With data suggesting around one million Americans were living with MS in 2019, a representative for Blair told us she “wants to share her journey with others who might need her encouragement.” Blair partnered with EMD Serono on Express4MS to encourage anyone living with MS to know they are not defined by the disease, to hear stories of strength and hope, and to learn tips to advocate for themselves.
Blair recently sat down with The Healthy by Reader’s Digest to discuss her journey, spread her effervescence, and share a few laughs.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
The Healthy by Reader’s Digest: Selma, you have changed and helped evolve the perception of MS in such an empowered way. Now you have a new role as an advocate for people with MS. Does this mean you feel like you’ve reached the other side of some of the worst of the experience?
Selma Blair: Thank you. Yes, I really do feel that I’ve reached the other side in experience and growth and understanding and calmness. I have. It’s been a long journey, as everybody says, and we all realize what a long journey life can be if we’re lucky. I am really excited to be in this space, and I am excited to be an advocate because it helped me so much and it helped me when people taught me to advocate for myself better and to hear people’s stories.
When I was first diagnosed, there was nowhere really I could find a resource. No one wanted to talk about it, no one encouraged me to talk about it, that’s for sure. And then when I did and became visible, I was really surprised and heartened by the outpouring of support and questions and need.
I’m so excited to be collaborating with EMD Serono. It’s very near to me and very dear to me, to be an advocate and to help people learn to advocate for themselves and to find out more and to go on Express4MS.com. It’s a new campaign that encourages people to be their own advocate and to hear people’s stories and to share and hear, so maybe you could help someone or help yourself. And then take that and take it to your doctor and ask more questions because sometimes we don’t know where to start. I didn’t know anything about MS and so much was happening to my body … I needed resources, I was hungry for it and confused. And so I was that person.
Then I realized even that there came a point in my relapsing MS disease journey that I realized I needed to again advocate for myself and kind of reconfigure how to manage my health, so I did. I had to find an MS doctor. I thought I was all OK.
But things didn’t work as well as I had hoped, and I had to find another doctor and advocate for myself again. And this doctor really did help me and looked at me as a whole person and what I wanted for the future, and really found that I had had a relapse in what I was going to do moving forward. So I wanted to encourage people to know that even though MS might be a huge part of your life, it is not the whole story. And to not give up, there are options. There are so many options.
Right now I’m doing really well and so excited for the future. I didn’t think I’d be in this place, and I am—I’m doing work, and I have stuff in the works in fashion and beauty, and completed a movie and going to do a couple movies, and I’m going to be on my good friend Gavin Rossdale’s show. Just things of getting back out and talking to people and reaching people again. I loved being visible in my challenges, and I’m still here as kind of a resource in a way and an advocate and a cheerleader for people.
The Healthy: When you talk about advocating for yourself, was seeking a different doctor a critical point?
Selma Blair: Yes. I was at a critical point and there was a point where I thought, Oh well, I’ve advocated as much as I can do. I guess I know as much as I can know. But I still wasn’t really feeling well, and I just felt like, Well, this is just what it is. I think I was more hopeful that certain things that worked better than they did. Sometimes it’s hard, you don’t always know how to advocate even when you’re the advocate.
So yeah, it was a pivotal point to find a new doctor that really had a different approach and could bring me more options. And it’s also a woman, coincidentally—she’s the first woman doctor I’ve ever had. That was a source of strength for me always, is finding what other people with challenges—mostly women with MS, what they’re going through because it is so different—but yet we might all be going through menopause and MS or this and that. There’s so many different roads that everything can take and you’re looking for different areas of help. And I think there was a long time that I just did kind of give up again and I was coming to grips with, OK, well, this is just the best it’s going to be, and there were more options. And I’m doing really, really well.
The Healthy: We covered a study recently—a team at UCLA found that patients with female doctors have better outcomes and longer lifespans.
Selma Blair: I believe it. I mean, it was a totally different experience for me to have a woman that understood hormones and the way to even speak to a woman. I [have had] incredible, great male doctors, but I think maybe they’re intimidated in ways or they don’t necessarily care as much about the female experience because it can feel really different.
My doctor’s also a mother and I’m a mother, so she knew how important it was for my son to be included in my treatment and for her to make him feel good to move forward.
The Healthy: That’s so cool. We remember when you first came out publicly with your diagnosis, seeing your son next to you, but he’s a teenager now! And looks so much like you.
Selma Blair: He bleached his hair also! And I’m like, “Ooh, you just told the tell you like me more than you’re going to say, you did your hair to look like mine!”
The Healthy: When you went blond in the past few years, did that have anything to do with your health journey?
Selma Blair: You know what? My health journey took time. So in that time, I got older and I got grayer when I lost my hair and it came back. It grew back very gray, so it just made more sense to just turn into one of those ladies … just bleach my hair. It just was less refreshes between appointments, but when I was a little kid, I bleached my hair and my mom was all for it. I just always needed a brighter outlook on life. It’s just so much more uplifting to look through bleached bangs instead of dark.
The Healthy: You’ve helped lead an adaptable cosmetics brand called Guide Beauty, and earlier you made reference to the fashion and beauty projects that you’re involved with right now. Can you fill us in a little bit more, or what else are you working on?
Selma Blair: I am excited to share it when it is all firmed up. It’s just kind of a lot of stuff building right now and we need to cement that.
I’m really excited to read, and write again. I want to write a book, a young adult book that’s more in the fantasy space, now that I believe anything can happen—I don’t want people to give up, I want to instill that kind of hope, like The Secret Garden where you just think, “Oh God, that whole garden’s dead. What can I do?,” and then you open that door. That was one of my favorite books, The Secret Garden, and I think that really does speak to everything.
Also, I’d like to give a shout out to Mike White to say, “Hire me! White Lotus.” I’m like, “Oh my God, dream job, White Lotus.” He seems to have the touch of the women [who have] just been set back on their heels for a minute, and Mike White just reaches his little lovely hand out and says, “Come here and tell my story.” That’s my dream. So from my lips to God’s ears.
I would love to have community like that again—I love acting, I love being on a set, and I love that I have more energy now. I’ve really kind of come into my own a lot more now with confidence and just growing up a lot and going through things, and I’m just kind of bringing a lot of different things to that game. And I’m excited. I’m excited and anxious.
The Healthy: What’s one self-care habit you refuse to skip?
Selma Blair: Oh, I would say washing my face. I cannot go to bed anymore with my face with schmutz because I will be all pink and blotchy in the morning. Gosh, it’s just a whole different game once you’ve hit the menopause. So I think the old standard of washing—really taking care, not just washing, taking care [of my face] and moisturizing and stuff now that I’ve found the right things for me.
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