Rob Mallard has opened up about suffering from a progressive neurological disease.
The ‘Coronation Street’ star revealed he has an essential tremor, a nerve disorder which is characterised by uncontrollable shaking, on live TV today (05.03.18) and has suffered from the condition for nearly 10 years.
He said: "It’s a neurological disease, it’s in the same family as Parkinson’s and Motor neurone.
"I didn’t have it from birth but I don’t remember not having it, so it’s about 14 years old when I first started to notice it.
"Like most people, it manifests first in the hands, but then it can spread so I sometimes get it in the back of my neck and my head will shake.
"Then it’s a progressive disease, so by the time I’m 50 it could well be in the voice box, down the back of the spine, the legs, the whole of the arms. It could be quite debilitating.
"I’ve had this for nearly 10 years."
The 25-year-old star – who plays Daniel Osbourne in ‘Corrie’ – attempted to hide the disease but fans grew concerned about him when he was seen shaking in a previous ‘This Morning’ TV interview, and while he felt "embarrassed" and "angry" at the time, he’s pleased to have raised awareness of the condition.
He added: "My solution was to hide and manage because of the job that I’m in, it could really have a detrimental effect on my ability to get cast.
"So it was something I tried to keep a lid on. But once it was exposed live on TV I was incredibly embarrassed, and then angry, and then I started getting lots of messages off people on Twitter saying ‘me too’.
"So I thought there’s been an unnecessary spotlight that’s been thrown on me here and instead of leaving it and letting it pass me by what I can do is redirect it."
Rob – who starred as Connor Jensen in ‘Emmerdale’ in 2015 before he landing his ‘Coronation Street’ part in 2016 – has embraced using props in his role as bistro worker Daniel, despite his condition, because he doesn’t want to feel "afraid of them".
Speaking on ITV’s ‘This Morning’, he added: "I almost didn’t get the job on ‘Emmerdale’, which is the reason I got the job on ‘Coronation Street’.
"I did the audition for ‘Emmerdale’ and my agent rang me up and said, ‘They want to offer you the part, but they thought you were quite nervous,’ so I had to explain to my agent what this was, she got back in touch with them, there was a bit of deliberation and they said the part is yours.
"That almost cut me off before I even started, I had to explain what it was.
"On the [‘Corrie’] set, I work in the bistro so people are asking for lattes and by the time they get it it’s a cappuccino, so I said to myself, ‘I’m going to use as many props as I can because there’s no point being afraid of them.’
"They [the ‘Corrie’ crew] are great with it. Sometimes when they have to do a close-up of me holding a phone they have to put a tripod out and I have to put my hands on the tripod, and they have to do an extreme close-up of the phone, because otherwise it’s all over the place."
Rob Mallard opens up about hidden health condition
