Veteran actress Candice Bergen has finally come clean about her 2006 medical scare, revealing she denied she had suffered a stroke because she didn't want her health to become a "liability".
The Miss Congeniality star, now 65, was reported to have been hospitalised for an apparent stroke, but her representative dismissed the claims, insisting she was receiving treatment for high blood pressure.
Bergen has now opened up about the incident, confessing the media had it right all along - she just didn't want it to affect her career.
She tells New York Magazine, "I just don't want it to be a liability."
The actress took time off filming U.S. TV drama Boston Legal to rest and bounced back after two weeks, but she reveals some aspects of her health have never fully recovered.
She says, "My memory is just... not quite the same."
Bergen was hospitalised again last winter (11) after falling off a bicycle and breaking her pelvis, and the accident made her realise just how fragile her body has become: "(I thought), 'Wow, now I can fall and I'll break.'"