Evil Dead star Bruce Campbell says his previously announced cancer diagnosis will likely take his life within five years.
In a candid interview on The Adam Carolla Show podcast, Campbell said, “I’m in a five-year prognosis. With the type of cancer that I have, which I don’t want to get into, the current thing is a five-year deal.”
When he announced his diagnosis last March, Campbell called his cancer “treatable” but not “curable.” He said when making the announcement then, “I’m not trying to enlist sympathy—or advice—I just want to get ahead of this information in case false information gets out (which it will). Fear not, I am a tough old son-of-a-bitch and I have great support, so I expect to be around a while.”
In this week’s conversation with Carolla, Campbell elaborated, saying a five-year prognosis was accurate “give or take.”
“I’ve decided pretty specifically, though, to live with it, not die from it,” he continued, explaining at one point that he refuses to go down the “cancer rabbit hole” with groups “who have exactly what you have.”
“It’s a fascinating thing that takes place because it messes with your head, too,” he says. “Cancer creeps me out because of the ancillary stuff that it does…You don’t die from cancer, you die from what cancer does to you. It’s a whack-a-mole life, literally. Cancer compromises sh*t inside your body…so then you deal with that, and then you sort of wait for it to then compromise something else. Meanwhile, you’re trying to put out the whole fire.”
The actor said that his outlook of “appreciation and gratitude” has “come out of nowhere,” something he finds “very hard to describe.”
The 68-year-old Campbell is currently on an 18-date tour into November of Alamo Drafthouse locations for the film Ernie & Emma, which he wrote, directed and stars in. In it, he plays Ernie, a grieving widowed pear salesman on a journey to scatter the ashes of his late wife Emma.
Campbell last month told Men’s Journal, “I am in the middle of treatment, I am responding to treatment, to the point where I’m able to tour.”
Watch Campbell’s interview with Carolla below, as well as a trailer for Ernie & Emma.
