Photo Illustration by Thomas Levinson/The Daily Beast/Reuters
For years, colleagues assumed Selma Blair, 53, was using substances on set. She would sometimes stumble, fall, and slur her words.
“I’d have friends, you know, actresses on set [who would say] like, oh, ‘Save your drinking till the end of the day,’” she recounted in a revealing CNBC Television interview with Becky Quick on Monday.
While the Cruel Intentions star insists she never consumed alcohol on set, she could not explain her behavior at the time.
An answer wouldn’t come for many years, but in 2018, she finally got it: she had multiple sclerosis.
Multiple sclerosis, often simply referred to as MS, is a chronic autoimmune disease that impacts the central nervous system. The symptoms are debilitating and often socially isolating. Patients often experience difficulties seeing, speaking, and walking, according to the Mayo Clinic.
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The diagnosis was “a shock,” she said, but it also answered questions Blair had wrestled with since childhood.
“I was not a healthy child,” Blair told CNBC.
“Even in preschool, the teachers would say, ‘something’s wrong with her,’” Blair recalled. “I was sick all the time. I had a fever for years.” By kindergarten, she had already lost some feeling on one side of her body, she said.
Selma Blair has turned her cane into a fashion statement. Pictured here at the Vanity Fair Oscars party in Beverly Hills, California, in March 2026.
She suffered from constant fatigue and could not run for more than a few paces.
Many of the adults in Blair’s life dismissed her complaints, suggesting that it was all in her head.
While painful, this is not a unique experience: Many patients with confirmed autoimmune conditions report encountering doubt and dismissal prior to their diagnoses, even from the medical community.
“We did all just assume I was kind of just this dramatic person,” Blair said.
The accusations made her see herself in a negative light, as she struggled with “a lot of guilt and a lot of anger at myself and depression.”
The pain led her to self-medicate with alcohol. “Even from the age of seven, I started drinking,” Blair told Quick.
Prior to her 2018 diagnosis, she felt lonely and confused, unable to understand her body’s functioning.
Selma Blair starred in the cult classic thriller “Cruel Intentions” in 1999.
“The diagnosis to me was the first time I’ve had a diagnosis, really, other than a depressive or someone that was using alcohol,” she said. “I was thrilled to have a receipt of any sort.”
The medical practitioner she saw, however, cautioned her against sharing the news.
“The doctor said, ‘Don’t tell anyone, because you know what? In a couple of years, you could regain all your abilities. This is just a flare, and you’re relatively young, and it could be OK,’” she said.
Instead, Blair told the producers of Another Life, the Netflix show she was working on at the time, as “it was a series and it could go for a long time, so I did have to give the information.”
Their reaction? “The producers were so wonderful,” she said.
That same year, Blair also went public about her condition.
To express gratitude to the people who helped her get dressed on set, she posted a thank-you note on Instagram that simultaneously revealed her condition.
“I couldn’t use my hands correctly at the time,” she recalled. “I couldn’t figure out the dynamic of getting my pants on and off, and people took such care with me, and I didn’t know it could be like that.”
“I had no idea [of] the impact that would have on some people that were looking for visibility or looking for understanding of their own neurological or chronic illness journey,” Blair said.
Selma Blair suffered for years from a plethora of symptoms before finally receiving a diagnosis. Here at the ELLE Women in Hollywood Celebration in Los Angeles, California, in November 2025.
Since then, she has found a treatment that helps her.
“I think I was like an eight on a disability scale. It went down to four,” she said, adding that her condition had stabilized and she was happy to be back to acting.
“I feel more confident now that I found the treatment that has my MS in a good place, and so now I can push myself more because I’ve been relapse-free for a couple of years,” she said. “I’m a much better actress probably now than I was before, because I didn’t know who I was at all.”
Selma Blair gave the interview while her service dog, Scout, slept on the couch. Pictured here together at the Vanity Fair Oscars party in Beverly Hills, California, in March 2025.
Still, her day-to-day life with MS is accompanied by unique challenges.
“I’m doing really well, and I can do a lot of things, but it is hard,” she said. “I wake up more exhausted than when I went to bed, and I have to really try. I have to really monitor my energy.”
Blair noted that her illness was not the most challenging part of her journey. Motherhood, she said, is harder. She has one son, Arthur, who is 14 and “having his own health journey,” Blair said.
She added, “I feel like I can handle what happens to me. I’m pretty resilient.”
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