Elizabeth Hurley has opened up about her grandmother's battle with breast cancer in a bid to raise awareness of the disease. The Royals star, who is an ambassador for the Estée Lauder Breast Cancer Campaign, spoke about losing her grandmother to the illness during an appearance on ITV's Loose Women on Tuesday.
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"They didn't talk about it [then] and she didn't talk about it and it's a source of enormous sadness to me that I feel if she'd been diagnosed today with what we know now, with the advances they've made in treatments, with diagnosis, with awareness, the way we talk about it, I feel it could just have been different for her," Elizabeth said of her grandmother. "I'm sure everybody who has had this awful experience in their lives just had these terrible regrets that it didn't come sooner, which makes us so much keener to now say, 'there has to be a time when we don't talk about any breast cancer awareness anymore because there isn't breast cancer', we need to get to that day."
© Photo: RexElizabeth Hurley appeared on Loose Women to talk about breast cancer awareness
The 52-year-old also urged women to check their own bodies regularly and to go to the doctors if they notice anything different. "You still are responsible for checking your own breasts and you're still responsible for going fast to the doctor if you have a problem," Elizabeth said.
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Speaking about women who may avoid going to the doctor for fear of a confirmation of illness, the actress added: "Of course we are [scared of that]. And my grandma for sure didn't want someone to confirm that she had a big lump in her breast. She obviously didn't want to hear that and hoped it would go away, like putting your head under the pillow when you hear a noise in the night."
© Photo: RexThe actress is an ambassador for the Estée Lauder Breast Cancer Campaign
Elizabeth also admitted she wished she was able to do more to support her grandmother following her diagnosis. "We didn’t know, which we've now found out, that people who have breast cancer are so enormously comforted by hearing other people's stories, knowing they're not alone. Having a safe haven to go to sometimes. All those are things we've learnt now," she said. "We didn't know anything when my grandmother had it and she didn't talk about it, she didn't share. I feel we weren't there for her in a way that we should have been, but we didn't know anything either."
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