EastEnders star left 'penniless' as she suffers life-changing illness

Former EastEnders star Cheryl Ferguson has shared that she is currently recovering from a stroke in a spate of bad luck. The 59-year-old actress, best known for her role as loveable Heather Trott in the BBC soap, admitted that her "world was rocked" after she was left unable to walk.

Back in May, Cheryl was at home watching TV when she first realised something was wrong. She said that she began to "feel funny" and was suffering a "really bad headache". In the night, she got up out of bed to go to the toilet and found that she was struggling to balance. "My whole right side felt numb, heavy and tingly," the soap star shared. Cheryl, who had surgery for cancer of the womb in 2015, called her son for help and he rang an ambulance. She was then rushed to the hospital in Blackpool, where doctors confirmed that she had suffered a stroke.

Speaking about how the sudden illness impacted her day-to-day activities, the actress heartbreakingly told the Mirror: "One of the hardest things is to process what it does to you. One minute you're walking, talking, going to the shops; the next your world is rocked. It's shocking."

She added: "You lose the ability to coordinate your hands, to walk properly, your balance is gone. It's frustrating and makes you angry. But I've started to recover; I am coming on in leaps and bounds now." Despite being on the road to recovery, Cheryl still uses a stick to help her walk.

The mum-of-one opened up ahead of the release of her explosive new memoir, Behind The Scenes, as she also touched on her financial situation. She admitted: "Material things don't matter; they can be lost or broken, but memories are everything. Friends, family and laughter - that's all that matters."

Cheryl previously admitted to using food banks after being scammed by her own accountant, leaving her penniless, broken and in crippling debt. She was "gobsmacked" to discover she owed hundreds of thousands of pounds to the taxman after her accountant pocketed her cash for five years.

She explained: "For five years I paid him faithfully, and he didn't send any money to the tax office. My savings, my security, everything was gone."

Despite an investigation by the police, Cheryl never got a penny back from the fraudster and was even forced to sell her house. But as she was in the public eye, she still wanted to keep up appearances.

"When you're famous, people assume you're loaded. I was paying restaurant bills I couldn't afford just so no one knew I was struggling. But behind closed doors, I was totally skint," she confessed.