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Stanley Tucci has a charming interview in Vera, the Virgin Atlantic’s in-flight magazine. I’m going to use the Vulture excerpt, though, because scrolling through Vera will give you serious FOMO. It gives a brief overview of all things Tucci, including his movies, his home life and his recent rise to fame as a cocktail-making bon vivant. It’s predictably charming but one admission that caught many of us off guard was Stanley’s discussion of his battle with throat cancer. Three years ago, doctors discovered a lump under his tongue that they couldn’t operate on, so they treated it with radiation and chemotherapy instead. However, Stanley had watched his first wife suffer through the treatments as she was dying of breast cancer, and he hated to make his kids go through that again. Fortunately for all his kids and his current wife, Felicity Blunt, he did, and the good news is that it looks like Stanley is and will remain cancer-free.

Stanley Tucci opened up about his past cancer diagnosis and successful treatment in a new interview. Tucci explained in an interview in Vera magazine that he was diagnosed three years ago with a tumor on the base of his tongue. “It was too big to operate, so they had to do high-dose radiation and chemo,” Tucci said. “I’d vowed I’d never do anything like that, because my first wife died of cancer, and to watch her go through those treatments for years was horrible.” Tucci’s first wife, Kate Spath-Tucci, died of breast cancer in 2009 at the age of 47. Tucci explained that his cancer treatment involved the use of a feeding tube for six months. “The kids were great, but it was hard for them,” Tucci shared. “I could barely make it to the twins’ high-school graduation.” The actor shares two children with his first wife and two children with his second wife, Felicity Blunt. “[Cancer] makes you more afraid and less afraid at the same time,” Tucci said. “I feel much older than I did before I was sick. But you still want to get ahead and get things done.”

[From Vulture via Vera]

It sounds like he received this diagnosis right after the birth of his last child with Felicity. I can see why he would change his mind about the treatments knowing the alternative was to leave five kids fatherless. (The excerpt said Stanley has four kids, but he has five, twins and another child with his first wife Kathy and two kids with Felicity). Anyone who has watched a person die of cancer has probably made similar vows as Stanley. I’ve watched two people close to me die of cancer and I swore many things as a result. But Stanley had just restarted his life with Felicity, his grown kids were still in high school, and he had an entirely different prognosis with his cancer. It sounds miserable, though. I’m so sorry the family had to go through that a second time. I can only image how frightening it must have been.

Speaking of his prognosis, Stanley’s throat cancers sound the same as Michael Douglas’. Michael’s also started by discovering a lump in his throat and was cured with radiation that took a severe toll on his health. In Val Kilmer’s documentary, he doesn’t say the lump was on his tongue, but he does say the throat cancer was cured quick enough, it was the radiation that wiped him out. Whereas Stanley had a feeding tube, Val had a breathing tube put in, that’s how he lost his voice. I’m glad all three men are out the other side of this. I hope we continue to learn more information about this type of cancer and what to look out for. I remember Michael claimed it was HPV, I wonder if that was true?

One thing cancer didn’t take was Stanley’s love of food. He latest book, Taste, My Life Through Food, comes out Oct. 5.

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