While shooting action-comedy Ride Or Die in Prague, Hannah Waddingham found herself struggling in a way she didn’t immediately recognise.
The Ted Lasso star, 50, says she noticed a shift in both her mood and productivity while juggling physically demanding stunt work for the upcoming Amazon Prime series.
‘I was doing all this very physical work, learning all these stunts, [and] I could feel my mood dipping – and that’s not me,’ she tells WH.
At first, Waddingham assumed she was simply exhausted from the intense filming schedule. The actor performed many of her own stunts during production, describing the experience elsewhere in the interview as ‘mangled’. But the symptoms persisted.
‘I feel like I was managing to do very little [that was] productive,’ she says. ‘I’m very much a glass-half-full kind of gal and I could feel that dipping.’
The actress explains that the gradual onset of menopause symptoms can make them difficult to identify in real time.
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‘We try to get through each day the best we can and, because it creeps in slowly, it’s easy to not really notice until, like I say, the wheels have come off,’ she says.
Eventually, it was a close friend who pushed her to investigate further. ‘It was on her insistence that she went to get her hormones tested. It was the best advice she could have been given,’ the feature reveals.
Waddingham says she has since found a routine that works for her, combining HRT with supplements, strength training and daily movement. ‘Activate your muscles – every day,’ she says.
You can read our full cover interview with Hannah by hitting this link. Subscribe to Women's Health here.
