Selma Blair Shares an Update on Her MS and the Importance of Self-Advocacy (EXCLUSIVE)

Since announcing her multiple sclerosis diagnosis in 2018, Selma Blair has been an outspoken advocate for people with MS. The autoimmune condition can be difficult to diagnose—in fact, nearly one in five people are misdiagnosed, studies show. So the actress had made it her mission to spread awareness of early symptoms, including those that have plagued her since childhood. 

Recently, the Cruel Intentions star chatted exclusively with First for Women about how she’s feeling now and why MS advocacy is so important to her. See what she’s shared over the years about her journey with MS, plus get expert insight from a neurologist on the signs you shouldn’t ignore. 

Selma Blair shares an update on her MS 

While Blair’s health journey has its highs and lows, today she says she is doing great and feeling well. 

“I am relapse free and feel it,” she adds. 

She’s “done sinking to the bottom” and has a solid sense of herself, though Blair adds you’re never “done” living with MS. Still, she told First for Women she’s filmed a new movie and has more lined up, and she’s returning to her love for fashion (and even including her son).

Additionally, she’s the star of Travel + Leisure’s March cover story, where she discusses returning to travel after missing it due to her condition, as well as the importance of accessibility in the industry.

“I don’t think I ever had the energy to hope my whole life,” says Blair. “I didn’t really think of what I needed. When you’re saddled with something challenging, that can really take center stage. And now that I’m really on the other side of a lot of things, I’m genuinely excited to have hope. I’m genuinely excited to be building my team now that I’m a different person and to be placing the people around me that I know are capable.”

Blair on her newfound confidence and hope

“I’ve just been able to grow into a woman and a mother now,” Blair said, adding “I really didn’t ever know if that would happen, that feeling of confidence that I could take charge. And a lot of that was admitting I didn’t have the answers. And I was open to whatever came, but really I wanted to feel better.”

Now, her priorities are trying to stay active but also stepping back to rest when needed. She takes time to nap and practices transcendental meditation. Her advice? “Take your time and really, really feel your own body. Don’t just take someone else’s word for it. Really check in with yourself.”

“It’s just a whole different experience as we grow,” she says of how far she’s come. “So I want that to be infectious for people to start to get that excitement in them to override some of the darkness we can all feel.”

What is MS?

Multiple sclerosis is a disease of the central nervous system that damages the protective sheath around nerves. This can cause symptoms like muscle weakness, numbness and vision changes. It affects more women than men, and people are typically diagnosed with MS between ages 20 and 50.

MS is a chronic, lifelong disease for which there is no cure, explains Sarah Fredrich, MD, neurologist at the University of Maryland Medical Center.

Patients will experience periods of remission (like Blair is currently), activity and/or disease progression. Remission refers to the time during which the disease is not causing ongoing inflammatory damage (relapse) or displaying a worsening of day-to-day symptoms (progression), she explains. 

Selma Blair’s MS journey

While Blair is thankfully relapse-free right now, it’s been a difficult road to get there. In an October 2018 Instagram post, Blair wrote “I have multiple sclerosis. I am in an exacerbation. By the grace of the lord, and willpower and the understanding producers at Netflix, I have a job. A wonderful job. I am disabled. I fall sometimes. I drop things. My memory is foggy. And my left side is asking for directions from a broken GPS. But we are doing it.” 

What is MS exacerbation?

When people refer to MS as being exacerbated as the Legally Blonde actress did, this means the disease is in an active, inflammatory state, explains Dr. Fredrich. 

“This is commonly called a relapse,” she says. “During this time, there is ongoing damage to the brain and/or spinal cord. The most common MS relapse symptoms include blurry vision with eye pain, unstable walking with or without dizziness, weakness (usually an entire limb or side of the body) and skin sensation changes (also usually an entire limb or side of the body).” 

Selma Blair’s early MS symptoms

In a 2023 interview with British Vogue, Blair revealed that she first began experiencing MS symptoms at age 7, though it would be another 40 years before she was finally diagnosed. Instead of receiving an MRI that could have potentially diagnosed the condition, Blair was given rounds of antibiotics and dismissed as an “attention seeker”.

“I had optical neuritis as a child, which really is only from brain trauma or MS, and yet, they didn’t recognize it in me, even though I was seeking doctors my entire childhood,” she said during a 2023 appearance on Meet the Press. “I had a fever of 101 [degrees] for five years, you know. It just never went away. I had CAT scans. I didn’t have bladder function.”

She tells First for Women that it wasn’t until she fell asleep in front of a doctor that she was finally given an MRI. 

Even as an adult, doctors dismissed her then-undiagnosed MS pain. “I knew the pain was real,” she recalled. “I thought it was, but I did start to convince myself, ‘You’re overly sensitive. There’s nothing wrong with you.’”

Why Blair stresses the importance of MS advocacy

Blair has been candid about her desire to help others with MS by sharing details of her own journey. She released a documentary titled Introducing, Selma Blair in 2021, and published her memoir Mean Baby in 2022, both of which offered a revealing look at her life amidst health battles. 

Now, she’s partnering with biopharmaceutical company EMD Serono on Express4MS to encourage anyone living with MS to know they are not defined by the disease and to talk to their doctor to discuss options. 

Express4MS is a platform designed to give visibility to the journeys of people living with MS and to the challenges faced by caregivers as well. The goal is to show that MS may be part of a person’s life, but it doesn’t have to be their whole story.  

You can hear real patient stories at Express4MS.com. If you have MS, there’s also an option to share your own story for potential inclusion on the website. 

The benefits of a supportive MS community

“That was something I wished I had had in the beginning. I didn’t know who to turn to,” Blair tells First For Women of her new venture. “People didn’t really talk about MS or other chronic diseases that much, but I think people noticed that there was a real need, that people really were searching for information and hoping to reduce the stigma.”

The actress says it also gives her confidence to realize that people are seeking resources, information and help.  

“I’m not a doctor and everyone’s journey is so different,” she says. “So I didn’t have specific advice for people. So it’s so great to have a platform where people could go and share their stories and hear people’s stories and highlight the need for advocacy and self-advocacy to take to their doctor and maybe find out options.” 

Blair’s self-advocacy for MS

She tried a few different treatment modalities herself, Blair adds, and there were instances where they didn’t work as well as she had hoped. When she experienced relapse, she struggled to come to terms with it and was unsure where to turn, she shares, so she had to relearn to advocate for herself and start fresh. 

“ My first step was to find an MS doctor again, and I did,” Blair says. “I found a doctor that could really look at me as a whole person and as a mom and what my life looked like and to make it easier and to really listen and give me the affirmation that I was feeling what I was feeling.”

“This is just something I really, really feel strongly about for people,” she continues. “When you have RMS [relapsing MS], it can feel like your whole life, but it’s not. It’s a part of your life.” 

And as for what message she hopes people can take from Express4MS, it’s to “not give up and to have hope, keep looking for options.” 

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