Rachel Weisz and other celebrities who have opened up about miscarriage

Marie Claire Dorking

·Contributor, Yahoo Life UK

Thu, 18 May 2023 at 10:24 pm BST

Rachel Weisz has revealed she previously had a miscarriage, and was surprised by some viewers’ negative reactions to the exploration of baby loss in her new TV series Dead Ringers.

Speaking on The News Agents podcast, the actor, 53, who plays twin gynaecologists in the series, said, “I think I probably was surprised because I was just telling this story about the female experience, and it didn’t seem to have been like heightened or overdramatised.”

“Women have miscarriages, I’ve had a miscarriage, so you suddenly see blood coming out of your body and these are just all part of a female experience of being alive,” she added.

“So we’re not used to it. I think we’re not used to seeing any of those things being represented cinematically or fictionally. So manbe this is breaking some new ground, this show.”

Despite one in four pregnancies ending in loss, there still remains a stigma around the discussion of miscarriage and stillbirth. Here are some other celebs who have opened up to help change that.

Meghan Markle

Meghan Markle originally opened up in 2020 about her own pain after revealing she suffered a miscarriage during the summer.

In a deeply personal New York Times article, she wrote: “In the pain of our loss, my husband and I discovered that in a room of 100 women, 10 to 20 of them will have suffered from miscarriage. Yet despite the staggering commonality of this pain, the conversation remains taboo, riddled with (unwarranted) shame, and perpetuating a cycle of solitary mourning.”

Markle, 41, shares Archie, four, and Lilibet, one, with Prince Harry.

Binky Felstead

Binky Felstead said in 2020 she “thought long and hard” about whether to share the miscarriage she experienced when she was almost 12 weeks pregnant.

“But I felt that if I can pass on any warmth, comfort or help to anybody in the same position – well that would be great,” the former Made in Chelsea star wrote in an Instagram caption alongside a scenic image of a field at sunset.

Felstead shares India, five, with her previous partner Joshua Patterson, and Wolfie, one, with current partner Max.

Myleene Klass

Myleene Klass publicly shared in 2020 that she had previously secretly suffered four miscarriages. But the singer revealed she had been encouraged to share her experiences in the hope of helping “even one lost soul”.

“I am Mama to seven babies, Ava, Hero, Apollo my rainbow baby and four little stars in the sky,” she wrote at the time on Instagram on Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Day.

“I know after my own MC’s [miscarriages] how I scoured the internet for stories similar to mine for peace, reassurance. I hope this helps even one lost soul.”

Michelle Obama

Ahead of the release of her memoir, Becoming, the former first lady revealed in an interview in 2018 with Robin Roberts that she had suffered a miscarriage 20 years earlier.

“I felt lost and alone, and I felt like I failed because I didn’t know how common miscarriages were, because we don’t talk about them,” Obama said.

“We sit in our own pain, thinking that somehow we’re broken. That’s one of the reasons why I think it’s important to talk to young mothers about the fact that miscarriages happen.”

The former First Lady went on to conceive two daughters, Sasha and Malia, with the help of IVF.

Beyoncé

In 2019 Beyoncé opened up about suffering multiple miscarriages, revealing it “taught [her] lessons”.

In an interview with Elle UK for the January 2020 issue, the singer said, “I began to search for deeper meaning when life began to teach me lessons I didn’t know I needed. I learned that all pain and loss is in fact a gift. Having miscarriages taught me that I had to mother myself before I could be a mother to someone else.”

Beyoncé had previously spoken about experiencing a miscarriage two years before giving birth to her oldest child, daughter Blue Ivy, in 2012. She described it as “the saddest thing I’ve ever been through” in her 2013 HBO documentary Life Is But A Dream.

She shares Blue Ivy, 11, and twins Rumi and Sir Carter, five with Jay-Z.

Lily Allen

Mum-of-two Lily Allen has also spoken openly about her experience of pregnancy loss.

“I think it’s difficult for anybody regardless of what world they live in,” the singer previously said on The Jonathan Ross Show.

She added, referencing the support of her partner at the time Sam Cooper, “There are many women – 17 stillbirths happen in the UK everyday – that go home and they don’t have that support, they have to go home and deal with that on their own.”

Amanda Holden

Also a mum-of-two girls, Amanda Holden spoke candidly about losing her son Theo, when his heart stopped beating seven months into her pregnancy in 2011.

In an interview with The Sun, the star – who is married to record producer Chris Hughes – revealed that she turned to hypnotherapy to cope with the grief of losing her little boy.

“There is not a day that goes by when I don’t think about Theo, especially when a new school year begins,” she said.

“But after we first lost him, Chris and I were diagnosed with PTSD so we went and had some therapy about that, as anyone would…”

Holden added: “I just felt like everything was my fault, and I felt so responsible – what did I do wrong?”

The star later launched the charity Theo’s Hope, which aims to raise money to help support other bereaved parents.

James Van Der Beek

After his wife Kimberly Brook miscarried multiple times, Dawson’s Creek star James spoke out about the couple’s pain.

“After suffering a brutal, very public miscarriage last November, we were overjoyed to learn we were pregnant,” he wrote on Instagram.

“This time, we kept the news to ourselves. But last weekend, once again, 17 weeks in… the soul we’d been excited to welcome into the world had lessons for our family that did not include joining us in a living physical body.”

Kelly Brook

The model and radio presenter has previously revealed she suffered the loss of a baby girl, with her then partner, rugby player Thom Evans, at five months pregnant.

“I tried to have a baby but it didn’t work. You can feel quite a bit of failure if you go through miscarriage, but as much as it was a real loss and a difficult time, I got through it,” she told Fabulous.

Tana Ramsay

The wife of celebrity chef, Gordon Ramsay opened up in 2020 about the devastating pregnancy loss she suffered in 2016, reflecting on how “amazing” her husband was in helping her through her heartbreak.

“Gordon was amazing, and he’s always been one to talk about everything and he was very good at sort of talking it out of me and never making me feel that, ‘Oh, you know, maybe we shouldn’t talk about it,’” she told the Metro.