Six months after first sharing the news of his cancer diagnosis, horror icon Bruce Campbell—best known to audiences as Ash Williams in The Evil Dead franchise—has revealed new details about his prognosis.
During an appearance on The Adam Carolla Show, Campbell revealed that doctors have given him a prognosis of about five years, “give or take.”
“With the type of cancer that I have, which I don’t want to get into, the current thing is a five-year deal,” the actor said. “I’ve decided pretty specifically though to live with it, not die from it.”
“You can go down a massive rabbit hole,” he continued. “The cancer rabbit hole is enormous. You can go into focus groups of 10,000 guys who have exactly what you have. I won’t touch it with a 10-foot pole.”
Campbell—who was on the show to promote Ernie & Emma, a new movie about a widower confronting the grief of losing his wife, which he wrote, directed, and in which he stars—said staying busy with work has helped him deal with his diagnosis.
“You have to make this decision of, ‘Oh, OK, but do I have to stop everything I’m doing because of this?’ Well no,” he explained. “So, it’s a sort of whack-a-mole life, literally.”
“Cancer compromises s–t inside your body,” he continued. “You don’t die from cancer, you die from what cancer does to you. It does weird s–t and then you address it and move on.”
“Right now, I’m between whacks,” he added. “So I feel perfect.”
Campbell first came to public attention in the cult horror film The Evil Dead (1983), which was made on a shoestring by his longtime friend Sam Raimi, who would go on to make three hugely successful Spider-Man films (all of which feature cameos from Campbell) and a string of Hollywood blockbusters.
The self-deprecating Campbell has also starred in many cult movies, including Maniac Cop (1988) and Bubba Ho-Tep (2002), and had starring roles in the TV series The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr. (1993) and Burn Notice (2007).
He has written two volumes of autobiography, If Chins Could Kill: Confessions of a B Movie Actor, and Hail to the Chin: Further Confessions of a B Movie Actor.
Campbell first shared news of his cancer diagnosis via Instagram, on March 2, writing—with his trademark wry wit—that, “These days, when someone is having a health issue, it’s referred to as an ‘opportunity,’ so let’s go with that—I’m having one of those. It’s also called a type of cancer that’s ‘treatable’ not ‘curable.’ I apologize if that’s a shock. It was to me, too.”
He noted that he was sharing the information himself to get ahead of it in case any false information made its way to his fans. “Fear not, I am a tough old son-of-a-b—h and I have great support, so I expect to be around a while,” he wrote. “As always, you’re the greatest fans in the world and I hope to see you soon.”
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