X-Men star left permanently blind in one eye after ignoring one troubling symptom

An Academy Award-nominated actor who starred in two X-Men movies has a long-term chronic condition that, without treatment, can cause blindness, due to not making his health a priority.

Can you believe it’s almost been a decade since X-Men: Apocalypse, starring Jennifer Lawrence, Oscar Isaac, and James McAvoy, premiered on the big screen?

The 2016 flick and its follow-up, X-Men: Dark Phoenix, make up the third and fourth instalment of the franchise’s prequel films, focusing on younger versions of Professor X’s gang of crime-fighting students, like Storm and Cyclops, and their enemy counterparts, the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants.

One person who starred in both Apocalypse and Dark Phoenix is an Australian actor whose other film credits include Angelina Jolie’s Maria, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, and The Power of the Dog.

For the latter, the 28-year-old earned himself a Golden Globe and a Best Supporting Actor nomination at the 94th Academy Awards in Los Angeles.

The star, whose name is Kodi Smit-McPhee, portrayed Kurt Wagner/Nightcrawler in the X-Men franchise, a mutant who possesses superhuman agility and can teleport from place-to-place.

As well as appearing as the Marvel Comics character in both Apocalypse and Dark Phoenix, he made a very quick cameo in Deadpool 2.

Now, he has firmly shed his blue suit and is gearing up to make his professional stage debut in London.

Acting alongside Cate Blanchett and Emma Corrin in an adaptation of Anton Chekhov’s The Seagull, Smit-McPhee will portray Konstantin Treplev, a young creative who abhors the current state of Russian theatre.

Kodi Smit-McPhee portrayed Nightcrawler in the X-Men movies (20th Century Studios)

Ahead of the tragicomedy’s opening night (March 6) and subsequent six-week run at the Barbican Theatre, Smit-McPhee revealed he was diagnosed with ankylosing spondylitis (AS) after putting off a meeting with his doctor.

AS is a long-term condition that causes the spine and other areas of the body to become inflamed, as per the NHS.

Symptoms of the rheumatism include pain and swelling and extreme tiredness, which can develop gradually over time.

If left untreated, AS can manifest in blindness - a reality Smit-McPhee knows all too well.

In a new interview, the actor claims ‘suppressed trauma’ from his childhood and the ‘stress’ of being a child actor is what brought on his AS.

“Ironically, I was playing a superhero in X-Men, and then I was doing these other action films like Alpha. And I went through very tough times on those jobs,” he told The Times.

After developing a cataract in his left eye, the Aussie admitted he didn’t ‘follow up’ on it.

The Power of the Dog actor 'can't see anything' in one eye (Netflix)

“You know, I was thinking too much and I couldn’t get back to the doctor. Eventually the cataract had done so much damage. It was in atrophy. So in that eye I can’t see anything,” he said.

Previously, Smit-McPhee admitted that he managed his ill-health - which has plagued him since he was just 18 years old - by ‘smoking and driving [his] car faster’ but now uses anti-inflammatory medicine, abstains from social media, and practices Taoism, a Chinese philosophy that emphasizes harmony with the universe.

Unfortunately, there is no cure for AS. However, medical experts claim exercise, physiotherapy and medicines that reduce inflammation may help delay its progression.

For more information on living with AS, you can head to the National Axial Spondyloarthritis Society (NASS) website.

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