Jeff Bridges Talks Beating Cancer, COVID: ‘Love was…Magnified’
By Movieguide® Contributor
Jeff Bridges recently reflected on his health crisis as he battled COVID-19 and cancer and how he overcame those challenges.
In 2020, the actor was diagnosed with lymphoma. Then in March 2021, while attending his daily chemotherapy treatments, Bridges contracted COVID-19.
Bridges, now in remission, told E! News, “The chemo wipes out your immune system, and when COVID hit me, I had nothing to fight it. I was just really at death’s door a couple of times there.”
“I remember the doctors saying to me, ‘Jeff, you gotta fight,'” he shared.
Bridges felt he was “in surrender mode,” but with the help of his medical team, trainers and family, he changed his mindset and fought.
Bridges shared with AARP, “For me, in that hospital bed, the obstacle was death. And that was the way. I kept thinking, Here’s the problem, you know? 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?”
“I couldn’t understand how you’d fight it. So, I fought by surrendering, which is not the same as giving up,” Bridges explained.
“What I really felt at the time was love. Love was certainly magnified for me during this time. Not only from the people around me, but also the love in my own heart for them. So, what I did was more like giving in to love, you know?” he added.
At first, Bridges thought nothing of his symptoms.
Bridges said, “At the time, I said to myself, ‘It doesn’t hurt. I don’t want to go to the doctor.’” He and his wife, Susan, took a planned trip to Montana instead.
“I’m hiking and feeling great. 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.”
After his bout with cancer and COVID, Bridges quickly realized his need to prioritize his wife. The couple share three daughters and three grandchildren.
“So often things are right on our nose that we don’t appreciate,” Bridges said. “But it turns out there are many positive sides in my life that came out of that experience.”
Movieguide® previously reported on Bridge’s health issues:
Jeff Bridges recently opened up about some of the challenges he overcame in order to walk his daughter down the aisle at her 2021 wedding.
Bridges was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma in 2020, and contracted COVID-19 the following year. As an immunocompromised person, the illness hit him hard, but Bridges announced he had gone into remission in 2021.
Bridges spoke about how he trained to walk his daughter Hayley down the aisle. At the start of his training, the actor could only stand for 45 seconds. He and his trainer worked every day to build up his stamina.
“Finally, one day I said, ‘Maybe I can do it, you know,’” he said of his time training. “And it turns out I not only got to walk her down the aisle, but I got to do the wedding dance. That was terrific.”
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