Exclusive: How Cobie Smulders kicked cancer to the kerb

Fans know and love her from playing the hilarious Robin Scherbatsky on the long-running series How I Met Your Mother, but the real-life Cobie Smulders is also a true bad-ass (and not just because she stars in the latest Tom Cruise flick).

The actress revealed last year she battled ovarian cancer at the age of 25 while filming season three of How I Met Your Mother – not that you would've know it by watching it. Cobie spoke to Be about why she chose to keep her cancer diagnosis private.

“I chose to not discuss it publicly because cancer is a very tricky disease and I feel so much of it was linked to my mental health,” she said of her fight with the illness, which included various surgeries to remove cancerous tissue from her ovaries and lymph nodes.

“I think that everybody reacts to going through that differently but for me it was important to stay positive and to stay optimistic and not surround myself with the thought of what could happen and what might happen. I was more focused on getting better and living my life.”

The 33-year says she decided to address her cancer battle in public to raise awareness of the disease.

“It felt right to come out about it because I felt it could benefit other women to be more aware of their bodies and when things feel weird to get it check immediately.”

Cobie plays Major Susan Turner in the upcoming film Jack Reacher: Never Go Back’, and admits she pushed her body to its limit for all the action-stunt training involved.

“[The film] required so much training - so much fight and stunt training,” she explained. “It was pretty intense program to jump into, but I really learned what I can endure by pushing my body to its physical limits.”

She added: “Health is a number one priority for me and it's probably even a bigger priority now that I have children. I think going through that experience [facing cancer] has made it one of the top priorities of my life and having gone through this film and being educated through the amazing trainers that Tom [Cruise] brings along with him, I learnt so much about my body and what's best for it.”

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Speaking of Tom, we drilled Cobie on what the controversial star was really like to work with (and no, Scientology did not come up).

“Tom is the greatest,” she said. “I think if I go on in this genre, I want to just do it with him because he's such an expert in how to do action and how to do these sequences in a safe way. We had a blast on set together and he could not have been a nicer, kinder, funnier man.”

Jack Reacher: Never Go Back is in cinemas from October 20.

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