Jeff Bridges is dedicated to the job.
The Oscar-winning actor, 74, defined how he initially didn’t know he had most cancers when he was filming the primary season of his FX present “The Previous Man.”
“What’s so weird, to me anyway, within the first season once I was doing these combat scenes, I had a 9-inch by 12-inch tumor in my physique, in my abdomen, that didn’t damage in any respect,” stated Bridges on the Tv Critics Affiliation Summer time Press Tour in Los Angeles on Wednesday whereas selling Season 2 of the present, in response to Leisure Weekly.
“The Previous Man” on the TCA summer season 2024 occasion on July 10. Rob Latour/Shutterstock for Tv Critics Affiliation
“In order that’s shocking to me,” he added.
Bridges went by way of chemotherapy after being identified with Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma in his abdomen in 2020.
He stated on the TCA occasion that he’s “feeling nice now.”
“The Previous Man,” which follows Bridges as a retired CIA agent who’s haunted by his previous, needed to pause manufacturing on its debut season when the actor realized of his most cancers analysis in Oct. 2020.
It began when Bridges was doing a house exercise and felt one thing uncommon in his abdomen.
“I’ve been identified with Lymphoma,” Bridges introduced by way of X (previously Twitter) on the time. “Though it’s a severe illness, I really feel lucky that I’ve an important staff of medical doctors and the prognosis is nice.”
The “Iron Man” star underwent chemo however then he contracted COVID in 2021 when the vaccine was not but out there.
He later Folks he that he spent the subsequent 5 months in excessive ache within the hospital, yelling for nurses to assist him with oxygen each time he rolled over.
“I used to be fairly near dying. The medical doctors saved telling me, ‘Jeff, you’ve bought to combat. You’re not combating.’ I used to be in give up mode. I used to be able to go. I used to be dancing with my mortality,” Bridges stated.
Fortunately, Bridges started seeing enhancements when his medical staff gave him a convalescent plasma, a remedy that makes use of blood from individuals who’ve recovered from an sickness to assist others heal.
He introduced in Sep. 2021 that his most cancers was in remission and he was returning to movie “The Previous Man.”
“The 9′ x 12′ mass has shrunk all the way down to the scale of a marble,” Bridges wrote in an replace on his web site.
He added: “Whereas I had moments of super ache (screaming singing, a kind of moaning tune all by way of the night time) getting near the Pearly Gates, all in all, I felt blissful and joyous more often than not.”
The primary season of “The Previous Man” got here out in June 2022 to rave responses from critics and audiences. Bridges was nominated for the Emmy Award for Lead Actor in a Drama Collection.
On the TCA occasion, Bridges’ co-star John Lithgow stated he wasn’t apprehensive about Bridges’ means to behave within the present amid his well being struggles.
“No, I by no means fear about Jeff,” stated Lithgow, 78. “I all the time knew he wouldn’t be right here if he didn’t know he might do that. And it’s been one of many nice and very shifting kind of backstage dramas of these 4 years. His braveness and persistence and his unbelievable philosophical nature, the way in which — no one might’ve survived what he’s been by way of and going again to work the way in which he’s gone again to work. It’s been extremely inspiring.”
Whereas selling the present in 2022, Bridges confirmed that he thought he was going to die when he was battling most cancers and COVID concurrently.
“Oh, the medical doctors, yeah – my spouse would ask, ‘Is he gonna die?’ And so they say, ‘We’re doing the very best we are able to.’ They wouldn’t reassure her that it was all gonna be high quality,” he instructed CBS’ “Sunday Morning.”
In April, Bridges instructed Web page Six on the forty ninth Chaplin Award Gala that he doesn’t spend a whole lot of time eager about his well being disaster now.
“It’s such a studying expertise being sick like that,” he shared. “It’s superb the way in which the thoughts can neglect all that stuff. I’m not pondering an excessive amount of concerning the previous.”
Season 2 of “The Previous Man” premieres September 12.
