Courageous Cohen: HOW I BEAT THE ODDS

The busy actor got a life-changing shock diagnosis

- Debbie Harrison

Kiwi actor Cohen Holloway shrugged off his increasingly painful migraines for months before he saw anyone about them – he'd suffered from them as a child and just assumed they'd returned, with a vengeance. But his life changed in an instant when he learnt the real reason – he had stage four brain cancer.

"I'd been exhausted after filming Dark City: The Cleaner in Christchurch, but I just blamed it on the long hours on set," recalls Cohen, 52.

"And then the migraines started. Six weeks later, my mother-in-law called an ambulance, whipping me to hospital and into an MRI.

"A doctor woke me up at 4am to tell me they'd found a tumour in my head," he tells Woman's Day from the Kāpiti Coast home he shares with his early childhood teacher wife Kelly, 48, and sons Cruiz, 16, and Leo, 12. "I came to after surgery with staples in my head, unable to walk and blind in one eye. It was terrifying."

For Cohen, whose acting roles include Boy, Eagle Vs Shark, What We Do In The Shadows, Hunt For The Wilderpeople, Educators and Jane Campion's Top Of The Lake, the news was grim. It was stage 4 glioblastoma, the most aggressive form of brain tumour. When Cohen asked the doctors the best way to beat it, they told him no one had managed so far.

Sadly, they gave him about six months to live. "I was a mess, Kelly was a mess, my mum was a mess," he recalls.

Cohen spent six months either in treatment, including surgery, chemotherapy and radiation, "which was like attacking a forest fire with a water pistol", or in bed with a little bell to "annoy Kelly with".