Blythe Danner reveals she fought same cancer that killed husband Bruce Paltrow
Blythe Danner attends AARP's 17th Annual Movies for Grownups Awards at the Beverly Wilshire Four Seasons Hotel in 2018 in Beverly Hills, California. Credit: Getty Images for AARP/Gabriel Olsen
Blythe Danner contracted the same form of cancer that in 2002 killed her famed husband, Great Neck-raised TV producer-director Bruce Paltrow, but that she is now in remission, she revealed Monday.
The Tony and Emmy Award winner, 79, who has continued to appear on-screen as late as last year with a recurring role in the Starz series "American Gods," told People magazine that her oral cancer is "a sneaky disease. But I'm fine and dandy now. And I'm lucky to be alive."
The mother of Oscar-winner and lifestyle-brand founder Gwyneth Paltrow, 50, and writer-director Jake Paltrow, 47, Danner observed that, "Everyone is touched by cancer in some way, but it's unusual for a couple to have the same cancer." Upon learning her diagnosis in March 2018, she said, "I looked up at heaven and said to Bruce, 'Are you lonely up there?'"
According to the Oral Cancer Foundation, approximately 54,000 Americans this year will be newly diagnosed with the disease, also called mouth cancer, tongue cancer, tonsil cancer and throat cancer. Danner said her particular type was adenoid cystic carcinoma, a rare form of salivary-gland tumor.
While working in London in 2018, she said, "I started feeling very woozy and I was forgetting everything," adding she then "felt a lump in my neck, right next to where Bruce had found his [in 1999]."
She did not immediately tell her two children. "I kept it from my kids for a long time," she said. "I wanted to forge ahead as a mother, and I didn't want them to worry."
"I was obviously very shocked," Gwyneth Paltrow, whose homes include an estate in Amagansett where she and producer-director Brad Falchuk married in 2018, told People. "It was scary. And it felt really eerie because it was so similar [to my father's]." Danner eventually underwent three surgeries, including the final one in 2020 that removed the tumor.
"She went through it with so much grace," her daughter said. "I was amazed at how strong she was able to be."
"I think we've all become somehow stronger" through the ordeal, Danner reflected. "It's a bit of a crapshoot — this disease and this life. But I've had a career, great kids and a loving husband. I'm very grateful."
