Cobie Smulders: Cancer changed me

Cobie Smulders went through a “huge shift” after being diagnosed with ovarian cancer.

The How I Met Your Mother star got the devastating news when she was just 25. She battled the disease in private, and now the 33-year-old has been cancer free for five years.

“It caused a huge shift for me,” she revealed to the American edition of Women’s Health. “Like, you know what? I’m just going to do things. I’m going to take advantage of life and enjoy myself and not get so stressed out. And that’s been my mentality ever since.”

Her new outlook on life is probably what led Cobie to pose topless for the publication. On the cover she shows off her flat torso and toned legs, made even more impressive by the fact that she only gave birth to her second child, a son, in January this year.

“It’s a stressful thing, [but] I’m going to hit that point soon where nobody’s going to want to see me topless – I should just embrace it, right?” she said.

Cobie also has five-year-old daughter Shaelyn with husband Taran Killam. The Avengers star loves being a mum, as following her diagnosis, the odds of becoming a parent were against her.

Because of the location of the tumours chemotherapy and radiation were not an option, so Cobie had to have multiple surgeries over two years and was left with only a third of an ovary.

“I had tumours on both ovaries, and the cancer had spread into my lymph nodes and surrounding tissues,” she recalled. “I don’t think I’ll ever feel like I’m cancer-free. Now that I’m five years out, I’m trying to think of it as a positive thing and what can I learn from it. And if I can create more awareness, I’ll do it.”