Miriam Margolyes, best known as Professor Sprout in the Harry Potter films, has spoken candidly about her health battles, many of which she links to her lifelong struggle with weight. In an interview with Weekend Magazine, the 84-year-old actress admitted the toll her lifestyle has taken.
“I’ve let my body down,” she said. “I haven’t taken care of it. I have to walk with a walker now. I wish I’d done exercise. It’s the most ghastly waste of time, except that it keeps you going. So, I’m foolish.”
When asked about Ozempic, a drug sometimes used for weight loss, Margolyes dismissed the idea.
“Absolutely not,” she said. “That’s for diabetics. You shouldn’t take medicine meant for people who are really sick. What I do think is we should not have food advertising on television.”
Margolyes’s update follows her recent admission that she “doesn’t have long left to live” after undergoing a heart procedure.
“When you know that you haven’t got long to live, and I’m probably going to die within the next five or six years, if not before, I’m loath to leave behind performing,” Margolyes told The Times, per The Mirror, in May.
“It’s such a joy,” she added. “I yearn to play roles that don’t confine me to wheelchairs, but I’m just not strong enough.”
Health struggles
In May 2023, Margolyes was admitted to the Royal Brompton Hospital in London with a chest infection. Writing from her hospital bed, she updated fans on Facebook after undergoing a heart procedure.
“Thanks to my precious friends who thought of me on TAVI DAY,” she wrote. “I did survive and am still in The Royal Brompton Hospital certainly till Sunday. I am growing energy but it’s still not quite me. I am putting this so you know how grateful I am for lovely messages.”
The “TAVI” referred to a Transcatheter Aortic Valve Implantation, a less invasive option than open-heart surgery.
Speaking later on the Table Manners podcast with Jessie and Lennie Ware, she explained: “I’ve got a cow’s heart now. Well, not the whole heart. I’ve had an aortic valve replaced by a cow’s aortic valve.”
“I don’t know how common it is. I’d never heard of that operation,” she added. “But it saves you from having open heart surgery, which would be infinitely more invasive.”
Margolyes has also been diagnosed with spinal stenosis, a condition that narrows the spinal canal and causes chronic pain and mobility issues.
Talking to Closer Magazine in 2023, she described her daily struggles.
“I can’t walk very well, and I’m registered disabled,” she said. “I use all kinds of assistance. I’ve got two sticks and a walker, and they’re such a bore, but I’ve just got a mobility scooter, which is a lot of fun.”