EastEnders star Heather Peace has opened up about working on the BBC One soap after receiving her cancer diagnosis.

The 50 year old actress, who plays Eve Unwin in the show, was diagnosed with breast cancer in October last year.

It was an emotional period in Heather’s life but instead of taking time away from the soap, she decided to continue filming as Eve, dedicated to finishing an important storyline for her character.

At the time, Heather was filming the final part of Eve and Suki Panesar’s (Balvinder Sopal) journey to becoming married. The scenes, which aired at the started of this year, featured Eve being poisoned by Nish Panesar (Navin Chowdhry) in his last ditch attempt to stop the wedding from going ahead.

Nish died at the venue, after he fell from a balcony.

Heather chose to film as Eve after getting that life-changing news because it was the end part of the arc, but also because she had no idea what her future looked like. Her EastEnders bosses said that she didn’t need to work, but Heather’s mind was made up.

‘We got back to Brighton at 7 o’clock, and I was on the road at 10 past five that morning, to Elstree, to start possibly the two biggest weeks that I’ve done on EastEnders’, she said in an episode of Gaby Roslin’s podcast.

‘I said, “I need to come in” because at this point I don’t know what’s going to happen. And I want to finish this arc of the story. Not coming in for the next two weeks is not going to change anything, but at least let me put the full stop on a story that’s been playing out for nearly two and a half years.

‘If we get to the end of that and we see them get married and we see them successful, if beyond that it’s a mess, I can leave and feel like I’ve put a full stop on something.’

Heather is married to wife Ellie. They have three children together, Annie, Jessie and Lola.

The actress revealed recently that Ellie was also diagnosed with breast cancer, months before she did.