Line Of Duty star Vicky McClure has said she is determined to battle “heart-breaking” dementia on behalf of her grandmother.
The actress, who plays Detective Sergeant Kate Fleming in the BBC series, watched the decline of her grandmother Iris in the grip of dementia before her death in 2015.
McClure, 35, has said she thought the condition was “just old people forgetting whether they’d locked the front door”, until her family suffered the heartache of seeing dementia first-hand.
The star has campaigned on Memory Walks against dementia for eight consecutive years, but insists she is not a “do-gooder”.
“It’s important to me and my family because my nana developed dementia and that was heart-breaking for us all,” McClure said.
“At first I didn’t really know what dementia meant and how it affected people.
“I had an idea it was just old people forgetting whether they’d locked the front door but then my nana developed dementia so its full impact really hit home.”
The actress, who is set to work on upcoming BBC documentary My Dementia Choir, is dedicated to curbing the tragic effects of the group of conditions, which have a severe impact on thinking skills and memory.
She wants to do her bit to spare the next generation the pain provoked by the symptoms.
McClure said: “My nana is where my determination to defeat dementia was born from and she continues to inspire me.
“Now I feel that everything I do now that is related to the cause is in her memory. If it wasn’t for her I probably wouldn’t be here doing all these things. It’s her legacy.
“We’ve got to get rid of it for good – for the sake of the next generation. We need to defeat dementia because it just can’t carry on. It is such a horrific condition – I hope eventually we’ll get the better of it.”
