EXCLUSIVE: 'Dynasty' Star Linda Evans Says Back Ailments Made It 'So Painful to Be Alive'

Dynasty star Linda Evans may have been one of TV's biggest stars, but she’s opening up about the dark days that pushed her to the brink.

Three years ago, the soap opera queen was struck with sudden back pain so excruciating, she felt it might not be worth living.

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"I really understood why people said, 'Maybe I don't need to be alive,' because it's so painful to be alive, and nobody had an answer," Evans told ET. "I said, 'There has to be an answer. This is not living.'"

Evans is now pain-free thanks in part to a laser procedure, but she's still waiting to completely return to normal, as cortisone treatments made her hair fall out. "This is not my hair," Evans disclosed. "This is a wig."

The hair loss came as a shock for Evans, whose big coif was once copied by stylists everywhere, but her hair will grow back.

"It's going to take me a couple of years to grow my hair back, but in the meantime I just go, 'Fine,'" Evans said with a shrug.

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Before her back pain, Evans struggled with depression decades after Dynasty had ended and many of her friends were struggling with health issues.

"I didn't understand depression," Evans told ET. "My blood pressure went up. It just became a nightmare."

Evans said one of her toughest times came after she stopped taking her blood pressure medicine, because she didn't like how it made her feel.

"I was outside and just blacked out," Evans said. "Next thing, I was face down in the gravel and I just got up and my face was bloody and I went, 'Oh my God! What just happened to me?' And I realized I just needed help."

To combat the depression, Evans wrote a book, Recipes for Life: My Memories, which is part cookbook and part memoir.

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"Friends said, 'You've got to do something that makes you happy,'" Evans said. "I said, 'Food makes me happy!'"

An updated version of Recipes for Life is available now.