Gwyneth Paltrow and Blythe Danner.Photo: Bruce Glikas/FilmMagic
Gwyneth Paltrowis praising her mom Blythe Danner’s strength throughout her cancer battle.
Danner, an Emmy-winning actress known for her roles inMeet the Parentsand onWill & Grace, revealed for the first time that she is in remission after a years-long battle with oral cancer, the same disease that killed her belovedhusband Bruce Paltrowin 2002.
“My mother is genuinely one of the strongest people I know,” Gwyneth says in this week’s issue of PEOPLE, noting Danner’s journey with three surgeries, chemotherapy and radiation. “I hope if I ever go through anything like that, I can be like her.”
Bruce Paltrow had carotid carcinoma and Danner was diagnosed with adenoid carcinoma, a relatively rare form of oralcancerthat often develops in the salivary glands, in 2018 after feeling a lump on her neck. However, she decided to keep the news to herself.
“I kept it from my kids for a long time,” Danner says of Gwyneth, 50, and son Jake Paltrow, 47. “I wanted to forge ahead as a mother, and I didn’t want them to worry.”
When she finally told her daughter, “I was obviously very shocked,” Gwyneth recalls. “It was scary. And it felt really eerie because it was so similar [to my dad’s].”
Blythe Danner.Taylor Jewell/Invision/AP/Shutterstock
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After two surgeries and years of exploring alternative treatments, Danner underwent a third surgery with Dr. Mark DeLacure in 2020, which succeeded in removing the cancerous tissue.
“She went through it with so much grace,” Paltrow added of her mother. “I was amazed at how strong she was able to be.”
“I wasn’t quaking in my boots,” Danner adds. “I don’t have any fear of death at all.”
These days, Danner surrounds herself with family — “nothing makes me happier than the kids,” she says — as well as her advocacy work with theOral Cancer Foundation, which strives to raise awareness of oral and oropharyngeal cancers, with which an estimated 54,000 Americans are diagnosed each year.
For more on Danner’s cancer, pick up a copy of PEOPLE, on newsstands now
source: people.com
