Jeff Bridges has had one hell of a wild ride the last few years and has opened up about working on a TV show with a 9-inch by 12-inch tumor inside him.
At 74 year’s old you would expect many Hollywood actors would slow down and essentially only pop up occasionally in films and TV shows.
Not Jeff Bridges, but most people didn’t know just how resilient the actor is as he recently opened up about his health struggles while working.
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In fact, while suffering with cancer, the actor spoke about having a ‘bizarre feeling’ despite being close to death.
Speaking during the Television Critics Association Summer Press Tour on July 10 he gave an update about his health and how he has recovered.
According to Entertainment Weekly, speaking on the panel he said: “I’m feeling great now.”
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"What is so bizarre, to me anyway, in the first season when I was doing these fight scenes, I had a 9-inch by 12-inch tumor in my body, in my stomach, that didn’t hurt at all. So that’s surprising to me."
Damn right that is surprising considering just how debilitating the disease can be.
Bridges has been open about his health in recent years and has said he was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma in 2020.
This was during a Covid-19 pandemic mandated break from filming the thriller TV show he was starring in, ‘The Old Man’.
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During an interview with AARP magazine in 2023, he spoke about how unaware he was of the tumor and how simply he brushed off its symptoms.
"I was doing some exercises while on the ground and felt what seemed like a bone in my stomach. I thought to myself, ‘Hmm.’ But it didn’t hurt or anything. I asked [wife] Sue what she thought. She said: ‘I don’t know, but you’ve got to get it checked out.'"
He added: “I’m hiking and feeling great.
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"My shins really itch, and I think, ‘Oh, I just got, you know, dry skin.’ Then I had night sweats, but thought, ‘That’s just hot summer nights.’ It turns out those are lymphoma symptoms."
"You’d think that would have hurt or something, when they were punching me and stuff..."It didn’t."
Back in September 2021, Bridges announced on his website that his cancer was in remission had shrunk down to the size of a marble.
Unfortunately, not long after completing his final round of chemotherapy he got a letter from the hospital saying he could have been exposed to Covid-19 and it eventually hit him quite hard.
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Bridges explained: “That meant me being in the hospital for five weeks, very close to, you know, kicking the bucket. I mean, I was very sick."
In 2022 he reflected on the ordeal saying he was ‘pretty close to dying’ but funnily enough, now, the actor says he doesn’t think about the past very much. Like he said, he is feeling great now so that’s all that matters.
Topics: Celebrity
Gerrard Kaonga