Hallmark Stars Who Survived Serious Health Scares & Accidents

The Hallmark channel, with all its corny fun, has essentially carved out its own subgenre within the romantic comedy stratosphere. A big element drawing faithful audiences to the channel in droves is the casts of familiar faces — especially those actors from yesteryear whom audiences remember fondly, some of whom, like Dean Cain and Lacey Chabert, made the channel their home after scoring big-time on primetime TV. Others recognize folks like Bradley Cooper and Sarah Paulson from Hallmark outings they starred in before becoming even bigger stars.

But it isn't just the celebrity eye-candy that's alluring. Many Hallmark luminaries come across as relatable in that they, like their viewers, have had their own allotment of sad events, and are willing to share those experiences. One star, Alicia Witt, who survived breast cancer, revealed a need to comfort others. "If I can help just one person to be less scared, to be more informed, to go through this feeling less alone, I want to," she said on Instagram. Some stars haven't been so lucky, as evidenced by such situations as Shannen Doherty's death from cancer and Anne Heche's demise in a car accident. Tangentially, "When Calls the Heart" star Marnie Laverock survived a five-storey fall earlier in 2024, although her recovery prognosis at this writing remains unknown.

It's sadly ironic that these Hallmark players were hired to underscore the notion that happy endings can exist. Fortunately, a few of them, whose fates at one point had hung in the balance, have demonstrated that real life, however cruel, can also occasionally offer some cheerful conclusions.

Australian native Clare Bowen, who starred in Hallmark offerings like "Sand Dollar Cove" and "#Xmas," has had her fair share of family tragedy. In 2016, the actor, who first emerged in mainstream television on the series "Nashville," discovered that her brother was diagnosed with cancer when the show was in its final season. Fortunately, the disease, stage 4 lymphoma, has since gone into remission, but the scary prospects of what might have been smacked Bowen with a foreboding sense of deja vu. 

When she was only 4 years old, Bowen herself was diagnosed with cancer, end-stage nephroblastoma which affects the kidney, and she was faced with a gloomy prognosis. "I was sitting there in the hospital and I could overhear everything the doctors were telling my poor shell-shocked parents," said Bowen to The West Australian. She was given only a few weeks to live, even if doctors were to try a procedure still in its nascent stages of development. "My parents signed a form saying they wouldn't sue if the doctors tried this experimental treatment," Bowen added. "The doctors explained that it could kill me. But it didn't. I'm still here. Apparently I'm very difficult to kill."

After being medicated to shrink the football-sized tumor small enough to be removed in surgery, Bowen spent nearly a year in hospital. But it took her a much longer time to recover psychologically from the experience. "I learned to love myself," she attested to The Tennessean.

One of the more prolific Hallmark actors is Cameron Mathison, who's starred in flicks like "At Home in Mitford" and "A Summer To Remember," as well as more than five installments of the "Murder She Baked" franchise. But more recent opportunities could have easily been taken away from him in 2019, when the Canadian thespian discovered he had renal cell carcinoma, a cancer that affects the kidneys. For the longest time, Mathison complained of stomach pain, unaware that symptoms rarely appear until the cancer is at a dangerous stage. When an MRI provided the bad news, doctors had to remove the tumor. 

"Feeling loved and supported by my family and friends, including each and everyone of you," he wrote on Instagram after a successful operation. "I've been very overwhelmed and so grateful for all of the supportive comments and prayers. The surgery went very well. The tumor is gone and I even got to keep 80% of my kidney." 

Three years later, Mathison, who's also starred in soaps that include "All My Children" and "General Hospital," was philosophical about that terrifying medical episode of his life. Claiming that being a cancer survivor affected his personal outlook, Mathison has since taken advantage of his profile to raise awareness of the American Cancer Society's efforts to fight the disease.  "I've definitely got a different perspective on life for sure from this experience," he said to Entertainment Tonight. 

Like several young men growing up in Alberta, Canada, Niall Matter worked in the oilpatch, where the money was good but the work was dangerous. Matter found that out the hard way when he was almost killed by part of an oil rig weighing 17 tons that fell on him. The accident severely mangled his leg; "They had to rip me out of there," recalled Matter to Chicago Tribune. "It was pretty awful. It was horrific actually. I got to the hospital and the doctor immediately wanted to amputate my right leg. In the end I was able to remain intact and go through extensive physio to be able to walk again."

Matter spent six months in a hospital bed, contemplating a career in film. But once he recovered, Matter returned to the oilpatch, where he saw someone get severely injured the first week he got back. He quit on the spot. Since making the jump to entertainment, he's starred in numerous Hallmark outings that include "Christmas in Dollywood" and "Rip In Time," as well as  TV shows like "The Best Years" and "Eureka."

Pondering his possibilities when hospitalized solidified his decision to jump to film, something Matter doesn't regret. "When you have that amount of time to think about it, you realize how short life can be," said Matter to ET Canada, per Us Weekly. "And you might as well spend your time doing what you love to do."

Kristoffer Polaha's acting career was hardly an overnight success, as he worked his way up the pecking order from appearances on "Bones" and "Mad Men" to major parts in CW series like "Life Unexpected" and "Ringer." He's since starred in nearly a dozen Hallmark outings, from "Dater's Handbook" to "A Winning Team." Yet none of those achievements would have come to fruition had a bizarre building explosion killed Polaha and a friend walking nearby.

"There was a giant piece of glass that cut open the left side of my face," he said on the "Billy and Justin" podcast about the incident that took place in New York in 1997. "And a gap opened. You could open your mouth as wide as you can open it, that's what my cheek was doing. It was just hanging off my face." After being rushed to hospital, where doctors applied 80 stitches to his face (and 120 stitches in total), Polaha discovered how close he was to meeting his maker. "Long story short, the fire marshall when we were in the emergency room said, 'You guys should have been decapitated ... you should not be here right now and the fact that you are is a miracle.'"

Speaking on Facebook, Polaha credited a guardian angel he saw in Times Square earlier that year for saving his life and that of his companion. "I just felt this presence ... I got knocked into the street, but it was almost like we were lifted," recalled Polaha, who had since dedicated his life to Christianity.

There's a certain charm to Vespa motor scooters, which is probably why celebs from George Clooney to Paris Hilton love to ride them. But actor Peter Porte, the star of Hallmark flicks like "Rome In Love" and "A Gift To Remember," discovered a downside to operating one of those stylish two-wheelers in that it doesn't stand a chance in a collision with a sedan. Porte didn't fare too well, either. 

"There's no such thing as a small accident on a Vespa because what would've been a fender-bender turned out to be me flying off the Vespa, the Vespa landing on my ankle and shattering my ankle," said the actor to Soap Opera Digest in 2018. It turned out his ankle was broken in four places, resulting in months of recovery spent in a cast and missing out on a few movie gigs.

Porte wasn't out of work for too long, getting bit parts in movies and landing a significant story arc in "Days of Our Lives" by 2023, playing one half of a gay couple. Openly gay himself, Porte was aware that some potential adversity towards the storyline might surface, but he had faith that viewers would be open-minded enough about the subplot to tune in. "What I hope the audience takes from that is, like, we love each other that much, that we're going to make this work," he said on the "Michael Fairman Channel" podcast. "Even when the world is against us."

Greg Vaughan had hit dazzling heights starring in Hallmark movies like "A Very Country Christmas" and "Valentines Again," plus a few soap operas, but none of those projects ever afflicted him with severe altitude sickness. It took a trip to Colorado with his sons early in 2024 to come down with that condition, and according to the actor, the experience was hardly stellar. 

Chronicling the series of events on his Instagram account, Vaughn recalled having shortness of breath, congestion, and sleepless nights that got progressively worse. "Two full days gone, enough was enough, I finally surrendered & went to urgent care and to my shock I learned that I was experiencing severe altitude sickness!" he wrote. "My blood oxygen was at 54% & my lungs were full of fluids!"  The former "Days Of Our Lives" star added that a normal level for blood oxygen, which is the percentage of red blood cell hemoglobin that carries oxygen, is normally at least 95%. 

Information from the Cleveland Clinic revealed that if Vaughan had developed any more severe symptoms, the actor could have been dead within 24 hours. But after treatment, Vaughan felt well enough to deliver a message about his condition and warned folks about severe altitude sickness. "I just want anybody that goes into the Colorado mountains [to know], it is no joke, it is a very serious thing," he said on an Instagram video. "I guess that's why they call [Denver] the mile-high city."

Actor Ashley Williams is probably best known for playing Victoria on the sitcom "How I Met Your Mother," although rom-com fans easily recognize her in Hallmark offerings, from "Notes of Autumn" to "Never Kiss A Man in A Christmas Sweater." But the wife of film producer Neal Dodson and mother of two suffered something truly terrifying, one that she hopes none of her fans would ever experience. While standing in line at a Whole Foods outlet with her son, Gus, Williams, who was 8 weeks pregnant at the time, discovered blood on her shorts and running down her thigh, a horrific sign that she was experiencing a miscarriage.

Fortunately, Williams's life was never in danger, but the actor was shocked to discover that miscarriages were far more common than she realized. The American Pregnancy Association revealed that between 10-25% of pregnancies lead to miscarriages. It was a topic Williams felt should be brought into the open, instead of being treated as forbidden issue best left concealed.

Williams lobbed the first ball into that controversial court by penning an essay titled "I Need to Talk About My Miscarriage" in 2016 on the online publishing site Medium. One point in the piece brought the whole issue home when she wrote: "If 25 percent of my peers are currently experiencing miscarriages right alongside me, why wasn't I prepared? Why don't we talk about it? Why was I feeling embarrassed, broken, like a walking wound?"

Of all the stars in the Hallmark lineup, Alicia Witt has been among the most consistent in terms of getting work outside the rom-com bubble, nabbing memorable roles in shows that include "Orange Is the New Black," "The Walking Dead," and the 2024 horror movie "Longlegs." She's been just as prolific in Hallmark offerings like "Backyard Wedding" and "Christmas List." But her itinerary was interrupted late in 2021 when she discovered she had breast cancer. 

"Everything else came to a grinding halt as I began a crash course on all I would need to learn," she wrote on Facebook about her mindset after receiving the bad news. "Meeting incredible doctors, exploring both traditional and holistic therapies, getting further diagnostics to understand and to confirm the scope of what needed to be healed." The healing was made all the more upsetting when Witt was crushed by news that both of her parents had died of "probable cardiac dysrhythmia" after their furnace fell into disrepair in their Massachusetts home . 

The following June, after receiving a mastectomy and undergoing chemotherapy treatments, Witt revealed the cancer was gone. "While keeping hair was obviously the last of my concerns on a larger level, I did deeply wish to keep my diagnosis private until it was 100% healed, god willing," she wrote on Instagram. "I'm so grateful to all those along the way during treatment who honored me by protecting my privacy during these months."