Jeff Bridges is committed to the job.
The Oscar-winning actor, 74, explained how he initially didn’t know he had cancer when he was filming the first season of his FX show “The Old Man.”
“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,” said Bridges at the Television Critics Association Summer Press Tour in Los Angeles on Wednesday while promoting Season 2 of the show, according to Entertainment Weekly.
“The Old Man” at the TCA summer 2024 event on July 10. Rob Latour/Shutterstock for Television Critics Association
“So that’s surprising to me,” he added.
Bridges went through chemotherapy after being diagnosed with Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma in his stomach in 2020.
He said at the TCA event that he’s “feeling great now.”
“The Old Man,” which follows Bridges as a retired CIA agent who is haunted by his past, had to pause production on its debut season when the actor learned of his cancer diagnosis in Oct. 2020.
It all started when Bridges was doing a home workout and felt something unusual in his stomach.
“I have been diagnosed with Lymphoma,” Bridges announced via X (formerly Twitter) at the time. “Although it is a serious disease, I feel fortunate that I have a great team of doctors and the prognosis is good.”
The “Iron Man” star underwent chemo but then he contracted COVID in 2021 when the vaccine was not yet available.
He later People he that he spent the next five months in extreme pain in the hospital, yelling for nurses to help him with oxygen every time he rolled over.
“I was pretty close to dying. The doctors kept telling me, ‘Jeff, you’ve got to fight. You’re not fighting.’ I was in surrender mode. I was ready to go. I was dancing with my mortality,” Bridges said.
Thankfully, Bridges began seeing improvements when his medical team gave him a convalescent plasma, a therapy that uses blood from people who’ve recovered from an illness to help others heal.
He announced in Sep. 2021 that his cancer was in remission and he was returning to film “The Old Man.”
“The 9′ x 12′ mass has shrunk down to the size of a marble,” Bridges wrote in an update on his website.
He added: “While I had moments of tremendous pain (screaming singing, a sort of moaning song all through the night) getting close to the Pearly Gates, all in all, I felt happy and joyous most of the time.”
The first season of “The Old Man” came out in June 2022 to rave responses from critics and audiences. Bridges was nominated for the Emmy Award for Lead Actor in a Drama Series.
At the TCA event, Bridges’ co-star John Lithgow said he wasn’t worried about Bridges’ ability to act in the show amid his health struggles.
“No, I never worry about Jeff,” said Lithgow, 78. “I always knew he wouldn’t be here if he didn’t know he could do this. And it’s been one of the great and extremely moving sort of backstage dramas of these four years. His courage and persistence and his unbelievable philosophical nature, the way — nobody could’ve survived what he’s been through and going back to work the way he’s gone back to work. It’s been incredibly inspiring.”
While promoting the show in 2022, Bridges confirmed that he thought he was going to die when he was battling cancer and COVID simultaneously.
“Oh, the doctors, yeah – my wife would ask, ‘Is he gonna die?’ And they say, ‘We’re doing the best we can.’ They wouldn’t reassure her that it was all gonna be fine,” he told CBS’ “Sunday Morning.”
In April, Bridges told Page Six at the 49th Chaplin Award Gala that he doesn’t spend a lot of time thinking about his health crisis now.
“It’s such a learning experience being sick like that,” he shared. “It’s amazing the way the mind can forget all that stuff. I’m not thinking too much about the past.”
Season 2 of “The Old Man” premieres September 12.
