Amanda Peet<\/a> was diagnosed with breast cancer as her divorced parents were dying in hospice care in 2025.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
Actress Amanda Peet<\/p>\n
The 54-year-old actress opened up about her breast cancer journey in an essay for The New Yorker.<\/p>\n
Amanda wrote: “For many years, I\u2019ve been told that I have ‘dense’ and ‘busy’ breasts – not as a compliment but as a warning that they require extra monitoring. I had been seeing a breast surgeon every six months for checkups.”\u00a0<\/p>\n
In August 2025, the Whole Nine Yards star visited her doctor “for what I thought would be a routine scan”.<\/p>\n
Amanda continued: “Dr K usually chatted me up while she examined me, but this time she went silent.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n“She told me that she didn\u2019t like the way something looked on the ultrasound and wanted to perform a biopsy.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n“After the procedure, she said that she would walk the sample over to Cedars-Sinai and hand-deliver it to Pathology. That\u2019s when I knew.”<\/p>\n
\nThe following morning, Amanda received a text from Dr K, who told her she had a tumour that “appeared” small, but would need a Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) scan to determine “the extent of disease”.<\/p>\n
\nThe Brockmire alum added: “On Tuesday, we would also learn my receptor status, which indicates how tough your strain of cancer is. ‘It\u2019s like dogs,’ she explained. ‘You have poodles on one end and, on the other, pit bulls.’<\/p>\n
\nAmanda told her “two oldest friends” and her 55-year-old husband, novellist-and-screenwriter David Benioff.<\/p>\n
\nThe star initially held back on telling her and David’s children, daughters Frances, 18, and Molly, 15, and son Henry, 11, \u00a0because there was “nothing definitive to say”.<\/p>\n
\nDuring this time, Amanda’s divorced parents Penny and Charles were in hospice care, and that same weekend, her dad died.<\/p>\n
\nReferring to her sister, who is a doctor, she said: “Our parents, long divorced, were both in hospice, on opposite coasts. Our mother\u2019s had started in June, but our father\u2019s was only a week in, so we hadn\u2019t expected him to go first.<\/p>\n
\n\u201cI flew to New York. I didn\u2019t make it before my father took his last breath, but I got to see his body before it was taken from his apartment.”\u00a0<\/p>\n
\nAmanda added: “As soon as my dad\u2019s corpse was out of sight, I was free to panic about my cancer again.”<\/p>\n
\nThe Your Friends and Neighbors cast member and her sister – who privately told their stepmom about Amanda’s breast cancer diagnosis – returned to Los Angeles to care for their mom, Penny.<\/p>\n
\nThe siblings decided not to tell Penny about Charles\u2019 death or Amanda’s breast cancer because she was in the final stages of her battle with Parkinson’s disease.<\/p>\n
\nAmanda took anxiety medication as she awaited her results from Dr K.<\/p>\n
\nShe recalled: “I sucked on little chips of Ativan all day, but my blood pressure was so jacked they didn\u2019t even register.”<\/p>\n
\nThe Saving Silverman actress was relieved when Dr K told her that the cancer would be treatable: “Dr K texted, ‘All poodle features!’<\/p>\n
\nAmanda then learnt that she was “hormone-receptor-positive and HER2-negative”.<\/p>\n
\nShe remembered: “You\u2019d think that I had just taken Ecstasy. I was happier than I\u2019d been pre-diagnosis, when I was just a regular person who didn\u2019t have cancer.”<\/p>\n
\nBut “after about 10 minutes”, Amanda reverted back to “baseline terror” after it clicked that she still needed an MRI scan.<\/p>\n
\nThe A Lot Like Love alum added: “Dr K said that the radiologist would check my lymph nodes, as well as ‘the left side for any surprise findings’ and call with the results within a week.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n“It was dawning on me that cancer diagnoses come in a slow drip.”<\/p>\n
\nThe radiologist found a “second mass in the same breast” and “ordered an MRI-guided biopsy, which is when a tumour sample is extracted while you\u2019re inside the big white imaging doughnut”.<\/p>\n
\nFollowing the procedure, the doctor told Amanda that “it was fifty-fifty whether or not there was more cancer”.<\/p>\n
\nThe star breathed a sigh of relief two days later when they “found out that the second mass was benign, and that I would only need a lumpectomy and radiation, not a double mastectomy or chemo”, and Amanda told her children about her health ordeal.<\/p>\n
\nBut a fortnight after Amanda’s “first clear scan” in January, she had to make funeral arrangements as the hospice nurse told her that Penny “was going to die in a matter of days”.<\/p>\n
\nRecalling the final moments with her mom, the Identity actress said: “The morphine was taking forever to kick in, and she was looking at the ceiling and whimpering, so I climbed onto her rented hospital bed to get in her line of vision.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n“We locked eyes, and she quieted down, and then she and I continued to stare at each other for what felt like several minutes.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n“I thought of my teen improv class, which she had found for me when we moved back to New York from London. In improv, even if the given circumstances defy logic, you and your scene partner have to stick to them.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n“I wasn\u2019t sure whether my mom knew that she was looking at me or whether I was just a constellation of interesting, disembodied shapes.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n“I said ‘howdy doodle’ – that\u2019s how she often greeted me. But then I realised that she was communing without words, and I followed suit.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n“Time was running out, and, besides, I had already told her everything.”<\/p>\n
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