22 Celebrities Whose Lives Have Been Touched by Breast Cancer
Even for people who haven’t been diagnosed with breast cancer, the disease often feels personal. Since about one in eight women will develop the disease over the course of their lifetime, pretty much everyone has a family member or close friend who’s battled it. On top of that, we see breast cancer’s impact reflected in pop culture time and time again.
The same entertainment world that serves as our everyday escape is also a regular reminder that nobody is immune from breast cancer’s devastating effects, not even the most familiar famous faces. Think of the cast of your favorite ’90s or aughts TV series—Married… With Children, Seinfeld, Sex and the City, The Office. Or if those aren’t your thing, consider the anchors of the morning show that’s central to your a.m. routine. Chances are a star from one of these programs has had breast cancer. The same is true of beloved favorite reality TV stars, supermodels, authors, actors from movies we’ve seen a million times, comedians who make us laugh ’til we cry, and even top-tier athletes we watch in awe.
All these stars share a certain aura of invincibility, not to mention access to top-tier medical care, personal nutritionists and chefs, and trainers. Yet the truth is many still find themselves facing a breast cancer diagnosis or fighting alongside someone they love dearly (and adopting the cause as their own). As a reminder of this disease’s reach, here are 22 of the many celebrities whose lives breast cancer has touched.
MICHAEL TRAN/Getty Images1/22Olivia Munn
Unbeknownst to the public the Your Friends & Neighbors star was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2023, when her son was just a year old. More recently, Munn, 45, shared details about her diagnosis and treatment, including the fact that she might not have discovered the cancer until much later if it weren’t for her ob-gyn taking the simple step of calculating her breast cancer risk using an online tool. “She discovered my lifetime risk was at 37 percent,” said Munn, who got an MRI as a precaution despite just having a clear mammogram. The test revealed aggressive luminal B cancer (a subtype that grows in the milk ducts) in both breasts. Munn ended up having four surgeries in 10 months and undergoing medically induced menopause. In an October 2024 Skims advertising campaign, she revealed the scars from her double mastectomy and breast reconstruction. “In the middle of this latest @SKIMS campaign shoot, I decided I was done being insecure about my mastectomy scars,” Munn wrote in a post about the decision. “Every mark life has left behind on my body is proof of how hard I fought. I hope other women who have been self-conscious about their scars see these photos and feel all the love I’m sending.”
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Jessie J
In June the 37-year-old pop star courageously chose to open up about her early-stage breast cancer diagnosis on Instagram. “Cancer sucks in any form, but I’m holding on to the word early,” she said in the video. Jessie J initially had surgery to remove one of her breasts, only to be hospitalized for an infection six weeks later. Recently, she canceled her U.S. tour and postponed planned UK and European dates because she needs to undergo a second cancer surgery. "I’m so sorry. I feel frustrated and sad,” she said in an Instagram video sharing the news, adding that she hopes to reschedule the U.S. tour when the timing is right. “But I need to be better, I need to be healed, and this is the right decision to make.” Despite this difficult setback Jessie J returned to the stage in September in England, performing in front of her two-year-old son, Sky, for the first time.
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Jenna Fischer
During Breast Cancer Awareness Month in 2024, the Office star opened up about her own history with the disease. “Back in October of 2023 I posted a photo of myself on Instagram preparing for a routine mammogram with a joking reminder to ‘take care of your ticking time bags’ a la Michael Scott,” Fischer wrote in a post. Unfortunately, that mammogram didn’t end up being routine—its inconclusive results led to her getting an ultrasound, which revealed stage 1 triple-positive breast cancer. She subsequently underwent a lumpectomy, chemotherapy, and radiation. Since her diagnosis the actor—who credited other women’s social media posts about their mammograms with reminding her to get her own—has been working to increase awareness about breast cancer detection and the importance of employers being flexible and supportive when women need to schedule screenings and treatments.
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Linda Evangelista
In a 2024 interview with The Wall Street Journal, the supermodel shared details of her private battle with breast cancer. After an annual mammogram detected cancer in 2018, Evangelista had a double mastectomy and thought she “was good and set for life.” But in 2022 she discovered a new lump that required further surgery, chemo, and radiation. Evangelista had happy news to share with WSJ, though: She was in remission, and post-chemo, her famously gorgeous hair was not only “all new” but a little different. “It came back very dark. It’s even curlier than it used to be,” she said.
Getty5/22Guerdy Abraira
In May 2023 the Real Housewives of Miami star revealed on Instagram that she’d been diagnosed with breast cancer that March following a routine mammogram at age 45. “For now I am preparing for my upcoming surgery and then will come my treatment plan,” wrote the high-powered event planner and Haitian native. “This process is definitely intense and what I ask of you is empowerment not pity.” When Abraira started chemo the mom of two began posting photos of her shaved head, which made her look even more fierce. Since then she has continued rocking her bare look at events, though she occasionally wears wigs as well. In September 2023 she finished her last chemo treatment and moved on to 20 rounds of radiation. At BravoCon 2023 she confirmed—and celebrated—that she had entered remission. “I am lucky that this breast cancer was discovered at an early stage—it is still scary of course, but I have love and support from those around me and that alone is the fuel that I need,” she wrote in her original Instagram post about her diagnosis. “For those who do not get health checks regularly, I urge you to. Your life depends on it.”
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Getty6/22Cynthia Nixon
The star of Sex and the City and its reboot, And Just Like That…, always knew she was at increased risk of developing breast cancer because her mom, Anne, was a survivor. “I always sort of thought, ‘I’m probably going to get breast cancer. There’s a really good chance.’” Nixon told Nightline’s Cynthia McFadden. Ultimately, she was diagnosed with early-stage breast cancer during a routine mammogram, which she started getting at age 35 due to her family history. While the news was scary, she focused on the fact that they’d caught the disease when it was still curable. After undergoing a lumpectomy and radiation, Nixon set her sights on raising awareness about the disease and became a spokesperson for the Susan G. Komen foundation. “I want [women] most to hear me saying that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself,” she said in the interview with ABC News. “So the only thing to really be afraid of is if you don’t go get your mammograms because there’s some part of you that doesn’t want to know, and that’s the thing that’s going to trip you up. That’s the thing that could have a really bad endgame,” Nixon said.
Kevin Mazur/Getty Images7/22Mary J. Blige
The music icon and 2023 Glamour Woman of the Year lost her aunt to breast cancer. Since then Blige has made it her mission to raise awareness among Black women that they have the highest risk of dying from the disease, in part because many develop triple-negative breast cancer, which is aggressive and doesn’t typically respond well to treatments. In fact, Black women’s risk of losing their lives to breast cancer is 40 percent higher than that of any other racial or ethnic group. Blige hopes to encourage the community to discuss this health threat more. “I didn’t know about breast cancer or mammograms until I was 40 and I was in the music business and I was trying to take care of myself. My body started talking so I started listening,” she told Essence in 2021. “I found out about it at the gyn. They don’t discuss this when we’re children. They don’t say, ‘Go get a mammogram.’ You learn about this as you get older. So they don’t speak about it, and that’s why they end up in the hospital with two weeks to live, and now you know about it. That’s why it’s extremely important to me.” Part of the message she aims to spread is that Black women should get mammograms younger than their peers (by age 40). Blige also wants to encourage Black women to start speaking with their doctors about family history and screening closer to age 30, since they tend to be diagnosed at a young age more often. To help spread the word, Blige has teamed up with Jill Biden and the Black Women’s Health Imperative. “Black women are often very private. We don’t want people knowing our business,” she told CBS This Morning. “But the more we open up, the more it allows us to share information that can be lifesaving.”
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Clea Shearer
In March 2022 the social media-famous professional organizer and star of Get Organized With the Home Edit found two small lumps in her right breast during a self-exam. But she initially convinced herself they were probably nothing—Shearer was only 41 and had no family history of breast cancer. She was wrong. She was diagnosed with stage 1 invasive mammary carcinoma, an aggressive form of breast cancer, and later she found out the cancer had also spread to nearby lymph nodes. Following a double mastectomy, plus a second surgery to address complications, chemotherapy and radiation, she finished treatments in November 2022. However, she has been dealing with ongoing complications and surgeries related to breast reconstruction. “I’m devastated and feel a sense of anger,” she wrote on Instagram in April (more recently, she had to cancel planned book tour dates). “I’ve fought so hard over the years and now I’m right back at square one. I’m sure those feelings will fade, and I’ll get through it like I always do.”
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Katie Couric
The journalist and founder of Katie Couric Media found out that she had breast cancer in June 2022 following a routine mammogram. As her doctor delivered the news over the phone, “I felt sick and the room started to spin,” Couric wrote on her website. “I was in the middle of an open office, so I walked to a corner and spoke quietly, my mouth unable to keep up with the questions swirling in my head. What does this mean? Will I need a mastectomy? Will I need chemo? What will the next weeks, months, even years look like?” Couric opted for breast-conservation surgery, which involved a lumpectomy paired with radiation and medication. She got through treatment and is now in remission. What scared her most, Couric said, was the idea of how bad things could have gotten if she’d waited longer to get her mammogram. “Please get your annual mammogram,” she wrote. “I was six months late this time. I shudder to think what might have happened if I had put it off longer.” Today Couric is a high-profile advocate for more effective breast cancer screening. She recently demanded that government guidelines get updated to recommend that women with dense breasts receive additional screening, which would require private insurance to cover it.
Getty10/22Angelina Jolie
When the actor discovered she had a BRCA mutation that gave her an 87 percent chance of developing breast cancer, the actor underwent a preventative double mastectomy to drop that risk to 5 percent. Despite being a private person, Jolie courageously penned two essays for The New York Times sharing details about her diagnosis and decision, as well as offering encouragement to others facing serious health issues. “Life comes with many challenges. The ones that should not scare us are the ones we can take on and take control of,” she wrote. Jolie’s mom, Marcheline Bertrand, passed away at age 56 after fighting ovarian cancer for a decade.
Getty11/22Maya Rudolph
One of the funniest comedians out there has a breast cancer connection that makes us tear up. When she was just six years old, the Saturday Night Live star lost her mom, Minnie Riperton, to the disease. Riperton was a superstar as well, a soul singer best known for the 1974 megahit “Lovin’ You,” which she originally wrote to soothe Rudolph when she was a baby. The singer underwent a double mastectomy, became a spokesperson for the American Cancer Society, and received the Cancer Courage Award from President Jimmy Carter. But breast cancer claimed her life four years later, when she was just 31. It’s not a story Rudolph has told often. “For many, many years, I couldn’t even touch this conversation,” Rudolph shared with The New York Times in 2018. “I don’t remember if I ever did proper grieving.”
NBC/Getty Images12/22Hoda Kotb
The former Today show co-anchor has said she wouldn’t be the person she is today if not for her 2007 breast cancer diagnosis at age 43. After her gynecologist discovered breast lumps during a routine annual exam, Kotb ended up undergoing a mastectomy—and completely reimagining her future once she got through treatment. That included what she calls a “wildly fearless” new attitude that she says helped her land her job at Today. “Cancer shaped me, but it did not define me,” she explained at a 2017 luncheon for the Breast Cancer Research Foundation. “It’s part of me, but not all of me. It just goes to show you that in my early 40s, I was sick, I was getting divorced, and I was in a job that I wasn’t suited for. I’m now 53 years old, I have a guy I love, a baby who is the light of my life, and a job that’s pretty cool too.”
Getty13/22Julia Louis-Dreyfus
In 2017, the morning after winning a record-breaking sixth Emmy in a row for Veep, the actor found out that she had stage 2 breast cancer, writing on Instagram: “One in eight women get breast cancer. Today, I’m the one.” Her treatment included six rounds of chemotherapy and a double mastectomy. To celebrate the Seinfeld alum reaching the finish line in October 2018, her sons did a memorable lip sync rendition of Michael Jackson’s “Beat It,” which the actor shared in an Instagram video. “The good news is that I have the most glorious group of supportive and caring family and friends, and fantastic insurance through my union,” Louis-Dreyfus wrote in her initial Instagram post about her diagnosis. “The bad news is that not all women are so lucky, so let’s fight all cancers and make universal health care a reality.”
Getty14/22Gabrielle Union
The actor, who starred in some of our favorite ’90s movies and made us love her all over again through her openness about her surrogacy journey, lost her best friend, Kristen Martinez, to breast cancer. Martinez was diagnosed with de novo metastatic breast cancer, meaning that by the time it was found, it had already spread to other parts of her body and wasn’t curable. She fought the disease for five years before passing away at age 32. During that time, Martinez acted as a passionate advocate for the millions of other women who, like her, were underinsured—and Union now carries on that mission as a breast cancer activist. “Kristen serves as my inspiration day in and day out to advocate the importance of screening and early detection and expand awareness about breast cancer, particularly among young women and women of color,” Union told Essence. “There are just so many women out there who do not have the funds or are too fearful about what they may learn that they do not get screened.”
Getty15/22Judy Blume
Blume, a beloved author responsible for inspiring countless young women to be readers and writers, has sold one million books for almost every year she’s been alive—and she’s 87. The Glamour Woman of the Year also happens to be a breast cancer survivor. In 2012 she revealed on her blog that she’d been diagnosed with invasive ductal carcinoma during a routine ultrasound, with no family history. “As I’ve told my friends who’ve also been treated for breast cancer, I’ve joined The Club—not one I wanted to join or even thought I would ever be joining—but here I am,” she wrote in her blog post. “I’m part of this Sisterhood of the Traveling Breast Cells (apologies to Ann Brashares). Medical diagnoses can leave you feeling alone and scared. When it comes to breast cancer you’re not alone, and scary though it is, there’s a network of amazing women to help you through it.”
Getty16/22Chaunte Lowe
Proving that even the most physically fit people are susceptible to breast cancer, the Team USA high jumper and bronze medalist trained for a fifth Olympic appearance while undergoing a double mastectomy and six rounds of chemotherapy for the disease. In 2018 she’d found a lump in her breast during a self-exam that was about the size of a grain of rice, but her doctor wasn’t too worried about it, since as a world-class athlete, Lowe was exceptionally healthy, not to mention young (age 35). However, she was also exceptionally attuned to her body. “There was something internally tugging at me, telling me, ‘No. Pay attention to me,’” she told Glamour in 2021. Sure enough, when she went back for another scan less than a year later, the lump had tripled in size. In 2019 she was diagnosed with triple-negative invasive ductal carcinoma, an aggressive form of breast cancer that disproportionately affects Black women. Her decision to continue training for Tokyo while receiving treatment proved incredibly empowering. “It is a common belief that mindset plays a huge part in positive experiences when patients battle cancer,” Lowe wrote in a post for Susan G. Komen. She added that training for the Olympics helped her “focus beyond my chaos toward a positive experience awaiting me in the future.… [And I knew] the media storm that comes from the Olympics would be a great way to bring attention to early detection, breast cancer awareness, and ways to fund research. I felt a sense of responsibility to use this platform to fight for the one in eight women who will be diagnosed with cancer in their lifetime. We have to force change to happen.” In recognition of her role in empowering people with breast cancer, Lowe was appointed to the President’s Council on Sports, Fitness, & Nutrition in March 2023.
Getty17/22Wanda Sykes
In 2011, at age 47, the actor-comedian revealed on The Ellen DeGeneres Show that she’d opted to undergo a double mastectomy and reconstruction following the shocking discovery during a cosmetic breast reduction that she had breast cancer, “I had the choice of, ‘You can go back every three months and get it checked—have a mammogram, MRI every three months just to see what it’s doing,’” Sykes said on the show. “But I’m not good at keeping on top of stuff. I’m sure I’m overdue for an oil change and a teeth cleaning already.” Sykes’s family history of breast cancer also played a role in her choice to take preemptive surgical action. “It sounds scary up front, but what do you want: Do you want to wait and not be as fortunate when it comes back and it’s too late?” she said.
@Imagez by LB18/22Christina Applegate
When the actor—who started getting mammograms at age 30 because her mom is a repeat breast cancer survivor—was diagnosed with the disease in 2008 at age 36, she was reluctant to share the news publicly. “I didn’t want to talk about it, but I had to, because young women were getting it, and people weren’t understanding that. My activism came out,” Applegate told People. She was also horrified to learn that so many women turn down MRIs because of the cost. “An MRI saved my life. Had I waited for my mammogram, I would be dead right now,” said Applegate, whose doctor recommended the imaging test as an added precaution due to her high breast density. She underwent a double mastectomy and, in 2017, after finding out that she carries the BRCA1 gene mutation, had her ovaries and fallopian tubes removed to further reduce her cancer risk. Since her initial diagnosis she’s been deeply invested in finding innovative ways to help women afford genetic testing and MRIs. In 2021 she revealed that she lives with another health challenge: multiple sclerosis.
Getty19/22Robin Roberts
The Good Morning America host is one of many who were angered by a government panel’s revised recommendations in 2009 that said women didn’t need to start routine mammograms until age 50 and self-exams held little benefit. (That controversial guidance has since been walked back). The reason Roberts feels so passionately about this topic is because she discovered her own triple-negative breast cancer during a self-exam while in her 40s and had to fight for expensive tests to confirm her diagnosis—yes, despite her celebrity status. When she found her lump in 2007, she said she “called the doctor’s office and said, ‘Hey, I found a lump—can you move up the exam?’ They said, ‘No, we’re booked solid.’ And I’m thinking to myself, Wow, this really happens,” she told Prevention. “I reached out to Diane [Sawyer] and [ABC colleague] Deborah Roberts. Deborah gave me a referral.” The GMA host’s frustration with the process led her to become an outspoken breast cancer advocate. “That’s part of the reason I [went public],” she said in the Prevention interview. “I’m very blessed—I have good health care, a great job. But my mother kept saying, ‘You’re not the norm. So be the voice for those people who don’t have it as good as you do.’” Roberts underwent chemotherapy and a partial mastectomy and gets annual mammograms and ultrasounds, plus a biannual MRI, to watch for signs of disease.
Dia Dipasupil/Getty Images20/22Miranda McKeon
The young Anne With an E actor was adjusting her shirt in a bathroom when she felt a lump on her breast, she told People in 2021. When her biopsy came back in June of that year, McKeon found out she had stage 3 breast cancer. She was just 19. “I didn’t think anything could be wrong because of my age,” she said. McKeon quickly learned that she was “one in a million” because it is extremely rare for teenagers to be diagnosed with breast cancer. Since she was diagnosed so young, she has a good chance of remaining in remission long term, McKeon told People, and she is staying positive. “I’m making it my job to find the beauty in all of this,” she says. “I wouldn’t have chosen this, I didn’t choose this, I don’t think anyone would choose this,” she said. “But I’m making it my job to try and pull something out of this.” McKeon shared an Instagram video during Breast Cancer Awareness Month in 2023 that showed her giving herself an injection of Lupron, which suppresses sex hormones to help prevent breast cancer recurrence. “I feel so grateful to have this platform,” she wrote. “I became a more brave and vulnerable person when I decided to post my writing, baldness, tears and heart on this app. It’s the scariest thing I’ve ever done and one of the best decisions I’ve ever made.”
Frazer Harrison/Getty Images21/22Giuliana Rancic
Rancic was beginning IVF treatments in 2011 when she learned that a mammogram was required. The entertainment reporter was 36 years old, still four years away from the age doctors recommend women with average breast cancer risk start undergoing annual screening. That mammogram, Rancic wrote in an eassay for E!, showed that she had breast cancer. “So trust me when I say I am very thankful to my doctor, as well as my son, Duke, since I wouldn’t have found it early if I wasn’t trying to have a baby at that time,” Rancic said. She eventually opted for a double mastectomy, which wasn’t easy, she said. But the experience made Rancic want to help women feel like themselves again after getting diagnosed with breast cancer, so she created FAB-U-WISH, a program that grants wishes to women living with the disease. Her advice to other women? “The key here is to make sure you are putting a mammogram on your to-do list every single year from 40 on—and if you are under 40, make sure to do a monthly self-exam,” she said. “Most women I meet who have had breast cancer tell me they found it themselves by feeling something on or around their breasts, so I can’t stress the importance of doing self-exams at home each month and at your yearly check-up each year. Breast cancer has a very high survival rate if found early, so the key truly is to find it as early as you can.”
Astrid Stawiarz22/22Sheryl Crow
In a 2022 documentary about her, the singer revealed that she nearly skipped the 2006 mammogram that discovered she had cancer—specifically, stage 1 ductal carcinoma in situ. “I’ve always been a healthy person who prioritized eating well and exercising, but at that time [when I considered delaying my mammogram] it seemed impossible to focus on anything other than getting through each day and keeping my career going,” Crow wrote in an essay for People about the documentary and her diagnosis. “Naturally, I found myself tempted to delay my annual mammogram visit—like so many women do when dealing with stressful periods of life, whether during a pandemic, career change, family issues, or just the daily grind.” But keeping that appointment, Crow said, saved her life. And now she hopes to encourage other women not to delay getting the checkups they need. “My story is a testament that you can go on to live a long, healthy life after diagnosis,” she said. “As a breast cancer survivor who credits early detection for saving my life, I have made it part of my life story to help educate women about the importance of scheduling their annual mammograms.”
