The Oscar-winning Hollywood star Jeff Bridges dropped a bomb on Wednesday when he revealed that he had a massive tumor in his body while filming the first season of FX’s “The Old Man”
Bridges Reveals Massive Tumor
Bridges, 74, revealed this on Wednesday during the Television Critics Association Summer Press Tour.
“I’m feeling great now. 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,” Bridges said.
Bridges was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma in 2020. At the time, he was on a break from filming the thriller TV series because of the pandemic. Bridges was working out one day when he realized that something was not right.
“I was doing some exercises while on the ground and felt what seemed like a bone in my stomach,” Bridges told AARP Magazine last year. He didn’t think much of it at first, but then he asked his wife. “She said: ‘I don’t know, but you’ve got to get it checked out.'”
“I’m hiking and feeling great,” he continued. “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.”
Unaware that he had a tumor in his stomach, Bridges returned to filming.
“You’d think that would have hurt or something, when they were punching me and stuff,” he explained. “It didn’t.”
Related: Jeff Bridges Says He Was ‘Close To Dying’ Last Year During Cancer Fight
Bridges Was ‘Pretty Close To Dying’
Things got even worse when Bridges got COVID-19 after his first round of chemotherapy.
“Shortly after finding out that good news, I got a letter from the treatment center where I was getting my chemo, and they told me that there was a possibility that I had been exposed to COVID,” Bridges recalled. “That meant me being in the hospital for five weeks, very close to, you know, kicking the bucket. I mean, I was very sick.”
Bridges later admitted that this entire ordeal left him “pretty close to dying.”
Now that he’s overcome this, however, he sees this entire situation as a learning experience.
“It’s amazing the way the mind can forget all that stuff,” Bridges told Page Six earlier this year. “I don’t think too much about the past.”
Season two of The Old Man is set to premiere on September 12. Bridges is enjoying working on it, as he believes his role in the show is one that he was born to play.
“I’m an old man,” he told The Hollywood Reporter. “I don’t have to play it. I bring that to the party.”
Check out a trailer for season two below.
Related: Henry Winkler Reveals If He’d Ever Come Back For A ‘Happy Days’ Reboot
Bridges Thankful To Be Able To Work
After everything he’s been through, Bridges appreciates just being able to work.
“I mean, I didn’t think I was … I thought, ‘I’m not going to come back,” Bridges told People Magazine. He added that he thought he wouldn’t be able to finish the show.
“As far as being back into the show again, everybody was so considerate about my condition,” he continued. “But I don’t remember that as being particularly difficult. Even the fight scenes after I came back, I can’t remember being upset about that.”
“You just do your best and that’s all you can do,” he concluded. “It’s something so great, actors working with actors, being a fraternity, a sorority … You’re looking out for each other.”
Bridges’ story is truly an inspiring one. Be sure to check him out in action when The Old Man returns in September!
More About:TV Show News