- Stanley Tucci appeared in an interview with Virgin Atlantic’s in-flight magazine, Vera.
- Tucci, 60, revealed that he was diagnosed with a tumor at the base of his tongue.
- His first wife, Kate Spath-Tucci, died of breast cancer in April 2009.
Stanley Tucci revealed that he was diagnosed with cancer three years ago and is currently in remission — more than a decade after his first wife died of breast cancer.
The “Hunger Games” actor appeared in an interview with Virgin Atlantic’s in-flight magazine, Vera, in which he got candid about his health. He said that he was diagnosed with a tumor at the base of his tongue.
“It was too big to operate, so they had to do high-dose radiation and chemo,” Tucci, 60, told Vera. “I’d vowed I’d never do anything like that, because my first wife died of cancer, and to watch her go through those treatments for years was horrible.”
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Tucci was married to his first wife, Kate Spath-Tucci, for 14 years and had three children before she died in April 2009. He later married Felicity Blunt, the sister of actress Emily Blunt, in 2008 and had two children.
Tucci told Vera that the experience was challenging for his five children.
“I had a feeding tube for six months. I could barely make it to the twins’ highschool graduation,” Tucci told Vera. Fortunately, Tucci added that the cancer is unlikely to return, and he is in remission.
“[Cancer] makes you more afraid and less afraid at the same time. I feel much older than I did before I was sick. But you still want to get ahead and get things done.”
During an interview with CBS Sunday Morning in January 2021, Tucci opened up about his first wife and dealing with grief.
“You never stop grieving,” Tucci told CBS Sunday. “It’s still hard after 11 years. It’s still hard. And it will always be hard. But you can’t let it … and she would never want any of us to ever wallow in that grief and let it take over our lives. She would never want that. She wasn’t like that.”