Fighting and surviving cancer is a mighty battle in itself that an individual has to fight all by themselves. The disease is enough to kick anyone’s immune system in the shins, and at 70, actor Jeff Bridges didn’t even have the probability prospects of a younger age. And as if having the debilitating ailment wasn’t enough, he caught COVID while undergoing chemotherapy. Quite understandably, the combined attack on his immune system and willpower left the Iron Man star predicting that he will never be able to grace the silver screen again.
In a chat with AARP The Magazine (via PR Newswire), Bridges confessed how being diagnosed with COVID was far scarier than knowing that he was battling lymphoma. “I had no immune system to fight it. Chemo had wiped that out, which made it really, really tough. For me, cancer was nothing compared to the COVID,” he remembered.
At this point in his life, he was confronting the possibility of never recovering and succumbing to the two deadly diseases. But he soon decided to see it as a “challenge.”
“Here’s the challenge. I asked myself ‘How are you going to go about it?’ And I thought, I’m a dancer, man, and I’m a musician. I’m going to jam with this situation, you know?”
The next fear to strike him was the prospect of “I didn’t think I’d ever work again, really.” That eventually morphed into dreading going back to work, which could worsen his recovering health. But then he saw it for what it really was.
“Then I began to think of it as a gift being presented,” he added. “To get back to doing what invigorates you — it feels great, man. I’m feeling that the times are demanding us to be as creative as possible. We should all work together to make something beautiful, like we do in the movies.”
Bridges shot the critically acclaimed series The Old Man while suffering the symptoms of lymphoma. For the duration of his cancer treatment, the production was halted for almost a year and a half. It resumed in 2022, opening to stellar reviews when it premiered on FX in June 2022, and has been renewed for a second season.
The Oscar-winning star is certainly a force to be reckoned with.