Jeff Bridges Talks Cancer Battle, Says Doctors Told Him He Had To Fight To Live

Jeff Bridges opened up about his cancer battle and said it got so bad at one point that a doctor told him he had to keep fighting or he wasn’t going to make it.

Speaking to People magazine, the 74-year-old actor — who was diagnosed with non-Hodgkins lymphoma, a form of blood cancer, in 2020 — said he wasn’t sure if he was even going to be back for Season 2 of his FX CIA spy series “The Old Man” after undergoing chemotherapy and contracting COVID-19.

“While I was sick, I thought I not only wouldn’t go back to ‘The Old Man,’ I thought I might just kick the bucket,” Bridges told the outlet. “It got down to that.”

“I remember one doctor said, ‘You got to fight, Jeff. You’re not fighting,’” he added. “And I had no idea what he was talking about. I was in surrender mode, just, ‘Everybody dies. This might be me doing that.’”

Jeff Bridges’ cancer battle left him in ‘surrender mode’ while filming ‘The Old Man’ https://t.co/nzGmubZnWK pic.twitter.com/JdMndJtYfP

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“And out of that surrender, like I say, all of this intense love surfaced, and maybe that’s what caused me to survive, I don’t know,” the “Big Lebowski” star continued. “But I didn’t relate to the fighting thing, more of a surrendering.”

Bridges said it was the love of those closest to him that kept him alive. He said that with their help, he started doing physical therapy along with the chemotherapy treatments and got stronger, setting a goal of possibly being able to walk his youngest daughter down the aisle.

“I didn’t know how I could do that, but I said, ‘Well, let’s train. Let’s put that as our goal,’” the actor said he told his physical therapist. “So we worked on that. And turned out not only did I walk her down the aisle, but I got to do the wedding dance with her. Then I’d rush to my table and put my oxygen on!”

And now after treatments and physical therapy, the 9-by-12 inch tumor in his stomach has shrunk “to the size of a marble,” as previously reported.

“I don’t know the exact size of it. I get MRIs and all that down the line, but my oncologist says, ‘You’re looking good, man,’” Bridges said.  “And I get all my blood tests and everything and everything’s going real well.”

The “True Grit” star admitted he’s learned a few things through his health battle and said that  “All of your strategies for life, how you work — all of those get heightened.”

“And love, that’s the word that comes to mind,” the actor said. “To see how much I love my family and my friends and the nurses and doctors that were caring for me, and how much love is coming at me. So it just exacerbated love, basically.”

Related: ‘I Didn’t Think I’d Ever Work Again’: Jeff Bridges Gives Fans Update On Cancer Battle