The actress Kathy Bates has been a mainstay in both film and television for several decades. She’s portrayed some very fierce roles, and she’s just as scary in person.

Actress had to make some major lifestyle adjustments after being diagnosed with a chronic disease.

Kathy Bates moved to New York in 1970 to pursue a career in acting. She looks back and reflects on how she was never an ingenue but made do.

‘I was never a naive young thing,’ she insists. Just a character actor all my life. I had a terrible time as a kid because I just wasn’t attractive enough.

Bates reflected on how challenging it had been to confront the judgments of others in the absence of employment.

Stella May, in Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean!, launched her Broadway career in 1980.

The actress was passed up for film roles that were based on roles she had previously portrayed. However,

at the age of 42, because to her performance as a deranged fan in Misery, for which she won an Academy Award for Best Actress, she went from unknown to a major star.

‘You’re either young and glamorous and you’re going to get the lead or it’s the opposite: you’re not pretty enough,’ she said of the jobs she was offered.

‘So you’re playing the friend/lesbian/doctor/whatever,’ she mused. But the one who plays the young, lovely, gets the lad at the end character has no say in the matter. The inverse is also true: a female character can be powerful but not feminine.

She then moved on to directing episodes of other shows, including the critically acclaimed Homicide: Life on the Street, NYPD Blue, Oz, and Six Feet Under.

Sadly, the actress has had some health problems in her personal life. Twice in her life, in 2003 and 2012, she was told she had cancer.

She was initially diagnosed with ovarian cancer in 2003 and then with breast cancer in 2012.

Actress Kathy Bates began speaking publicly about her lymphedema diagnosis after undergoing breast cancer surgery.

As part of her job, she acts as a spokesman for the Lymphatic Education & Research Network.

She disclosed that she had dropped 80 pounds over the course of several years. To prevent her arms from swelling, the actress must wear compression sleeves.

As her disease is more likely to flare up without them, she takes sure to wear them on flights and when performing physically demanding tasks.

The actress has found that slowing down helps her manage the condition: ‘If I can stop rushing, relax my shoulders,

straighten my spine, breathe deeply, and focus on each little minute completing a task, I have more confidence in my capacity to live with LE.’ Forcing me to take it easy, the epidemic made me slack off.

She urges people who are diagnosed with the ailment to keep moving on and not let it define them.

The pain of wearing a compression garment in public, the actress noted, ‘may sometimes be more agonizing than the sickness itself, especially when people aren’t educated about LE.’

However, staying inside and being inactive will only worsen your physical and mental health.

She is actively striving to increase funds for lymphedema research and increase awareness of the issue.

Even though she has been diagnosed with cancer, Kathy Bates has not let that stop her from working and taking on parts she is passionate about.