Kate Beckinsale said she was in hospital for six weeks with health issues relating to the stress and grief of the sudden death of her step-father, which “burned a hole in my oesophagus which made me vomit copious amounts of blood”.

The British actress, best known for her role as the vampire Selene in the Underworld film series, had been struggling with previously undisclosed health issues in recent months.

In March, she posted a selection of now-deleted photos on social media from what looked to be a hospital bed and did not disclose the reason for her apparent stay in the medical facility.

She also hinted at her health woes when she uploaded photos of her wearing a “tummy troubles survivor” T-shirt in April, in what appeared to be a hospital.

After posting a video on Instagram aimed at her critics, 50-year-old Beckinsale responded to a comment which advised her to “do some squats”.

“I watched my stepfather die quite shockingly, my mother has stage 4 cancer, and I lost a lot of weight from stress and grief, quite quickly and then I was in hospital for six weeks because the grief had burned a hole in my oesophagus which made me vomit copious amounts of blood, and I found eating very hard,” she said.

Beckinsale also said that before her hospital stay she had worked “very very hard on a movie that was actually quite triggering because it also involved the theme of the death of my father”.

TV director Roy Battersby, who won the Alan Clarke Award for outstanding contribution to television in 1996, died aged 87 in January.

He was known for his work on crime series Cracker, Between The lines, Inspector Morse and A Touch Of Frost and Tim Roth-starring BBC drama King Of The Ghetto.