Fund for soap star hits £50k target
A campaign to raise £ 50,000 for former Emmerdale star Leah Bracknell’s cancer treatment has hit its target.
The sum was reached days after the appeal was launched on donations crowdfunding website gofundme. com, w i th more than 2000 donations made.
Bracknell – who played Zoe Tate in the ITV soap for 16 years from 1989 to 2005 – and her partner Jez Hughes set up the fund to send her for treatment in Germany.
The 52-year-old motherof-two, whose real name is Alison and is known to her fami ly as Al i, has been working as a yoga instructor in recent years. She only discovered she was battling terminal lung cancer five weeks ago.
The act ress had an emergency operation to remove excess f luid from around her heart but was diagnosed with stage four lung cancer.
In her fundraising appeal, she wrote: “I was feeling fit and healthy, teaching yoga classes and workshops.
“It was a time of new beginnings – preparing to move house, youngest child f leeing the nest and excited to be star ting rehearsals for a comedy play, being back onstage, going on tour.
“But it turns out the universe had other plans. Life was about to be unexpectedly turned on its head.”
She plans to go for treatment at the Hallwang clinic in Germany.