When Selma Blair was growing up in suburban Detroit, she learned—in no uncertain terms—how a person should behave in public. “My mama told me I want to put my best foot forward,” Blair says. Sometimes, that meant covering up her emotions. “It was like, ‘If you’re feeling blue, let’s buy you a hat,’” she recalls. Other times, it meant literally covering up. “I never saw my mother without her makeup,” she says. “The [bedroom] doors would be shut and then, like Joan Crawford, she’d come out and be like, ‘Come on, I’m going to work!,’ made up and in her heels.”
Now a mother herself—her son, Arthur, with ex-boyfriend Jason Bleick, just turned 14—Blair may not aspire to that kind of performative perfection (“My son sees me with, like, my shirt on backwards,” she quips), but she does understand it. “My mother was of that generation…like the first generation, really, of mothers being professionals and parents,” she notes. “I mean, that’s a lot of pressure, and they kind of had to figure that out. And I think it was like, ‘We don’t want to seem too emotional. We don’t want to seem like we can’t do it.’”
Blair had her mother’s lessons in mind back in August 2018, when after a lifetime of unresolved health issues and medical gaslighting, she finally received a diagnosis of multiple sclerosis (MS). For two months, the Legally Blonde and Cruel Intentions star debated whether or not to go public; she worried, like her mother once did, that admitting vulnerability would limit her opportunities. “Even now,” Blair says, “I’m sure there are people who think, ‘Oh, she can’t shoot a movie.’”
But Blair, 53, is as much a product of the generation she’s a part of—the scrappy, independent Generation X—as her mother was of hers. Which meant staying quiet wasn’t really an option. And so in the same way that Shannen Doherty launched a podcast to detail her breast cancer battle, or Halle Berry founded a company to destigmatize menopause, Blair decided she wasn’t going to hide her experience with MS.
In February 2019, just four months after announcing her illness in an Instagram post, Blair stepped onto the red carpet at the Vanity Fair Oscars party with the assistance of a cane (bedazzled, of course); almost instantly, the appearance became a watershed moment in the fight for disability visibility.
In the years since—and with the same intensity she brought to the role of firestarter Liz Sherman in the Hellboy movies—the star has produced a memoir (Mean Baby), and a documentary (Introducing, Selma Blair), both of which were striking for their unflinchingly raw look into what her life with MS is like.
These projects came out after the 2020 death of Blair’s mother, Molly Cooke, a judge, and the actress isn’t sure how Cooke would have responded to such intimate portrayals. But Blair insists she has zero regrets about being so open. “I’m caught between my mom rolling in her grave at how much of an oversharer I am,” she says, “but I’m also really grateful I don’t have to hide.”
And that refers to all the parts of herself, not just the woman who is living with chronic illness. “I do think maybe people only know me now as, ‘The MS Lady,’” she says. “It’s OK…but I want to be more than just a diagnosis.”
Blair says her disease is currently in remission (“I’m going to live longer than I ever thought!”) and that she manages symptoms like joint pain with over-the-counter pain medication and by prioritizing rest. “There has to be a time where I’m going to drink a liter of water, and get in bed, and I’m going to meditate and recover, and I do,” she says. “I find tricks, because I’ll show up—no matter what—for work.”
“Work” these days still means acting (“I’d love to do a period piece,” she says), but also her advocacy efforts, like the TED Talk she delivered in June entitled, “The Quiet Power of Showing Up.” Blair has also recently become involved in several new business ventures, including a collaboration with Benny’s Eyewear on a line of eyeglasses and reading glasses, and another with Mersea, a clothing company that focuses on cozy, chic travel wear.
She is also a new partner in the Australian skincare brand Evidence Skincare (ESK), which she credits with being the only products that don’t inflame her autoimmune-compromised skin. “She came organically to the product, and then to us,” says Dr. Ginni Mansberg, ESK’s co-founder, adding that the actress immediately impressed the team. “She’s so warm and normal…she’s a gregarious, engaging person.”
Blair’s real joy, however, comes from heading to the stable where she keeps her horse, Mr. Nibbles, and “riding as often as I can.” A lifelong equestrian, Blair says, “my dream is to compete again…to do some horse shows, even if they’re backyard kind of things.”
It’s an ambitious goal, given that sunlight is a trigger for her symptoms; when Blair rides outside, she has to wear an ice vest to keep her body temperature in check. Her illness has also affected her core and arm strength (she’s currently working on her pull-ups—”I can only do two!” she says), which makes the maneuvering of Mr. Nibbles especially challenging. “As soon as he feels me being a little off, he, like, stops and catches me,” she says. “If I just give him his reins, he knows his job. I have some movements I make that I know must drive him crazy, but he’s still there for me.”
He’s not the only one offering Blair the support she needs. There’s her therapy dog, Scout, an English red fox labrador retriever, as well as her son, Arthur, whom Blair says “has so much compassion and empathy. He knows when I might be having low blood sugar that leads to a flare and makes sure that I have a snack. He does the little things I used to, like cut the tomatoes in the salami and make sure I have water. And he’ll put me to bed occasionally.”
The actress also shares with her son what Dr. Mansberg calls “a quirky sense of humor.” For example, one of Blair’s most marked symptoms is speech dystonia, which are vocal cord spasms that, when she has one, make her sound like she’s choking slightly on her words. “He couldn’t help making fun of that,” the actress reveals. “I was, like, ‘Super rude! You can’t do that out of the house, because people will think you’re a very mean person, but it’s fine inside.”
Blair’s even fine with her son acting like a stereotypical teenager when she drops him off at school. “He tells me to roll up the window, and that I’m embarrassing him, and can I turn off my music, and all of these things,” she says. “He’s a bit of a punk—like I was.”
Since her diagnosis, however, Blair has come to realize that a lot of her “punk” behavior was a result of her illness. “I can act quite impulsively,” she says. “I can be loud. I can cry to the point of, ‘Are you OK?’” My doctor’s like, ‘You’ve had shades of MS your whole life.’
”Yet it took decades for anyone to actually diagnose the disease. “I felt so crummy before [my] diagnosis for so long—truly, truly, truly so long,” she reveals. “I mean, I was on healing adventures forever. I used to date [Saturday Night Live’s] Mikey Day a million years ago, and he and everyone was trying to heal me. I was doing cleanses—anything to try and stay awake, or deal.”
She was also self-medicating “in a really hard way,” primarily with alcohol. (She has been sober since 2016). “That’s a rock bottom, when you’re going outside yourself just to feel better,” she says, adding, “I thought about it a lot because those years were really hell…with no one giving me the benefit of the doubt. It really made me a different person. I did not trust myself.”
If there’s any silver lining to what she’s been through, Blair says it’s the realization that by speaking out so publicly, she can spare other people from what she describes as “trauma” from her experience. “I think when we’re not feeling well, having community means everything,” she says. “To find a few people who can give you hope, and just say, ‘Atta girl.’ It means a lot.”
