Blythe Danner is opening up about her health.
The Meet the Parents alum shared that she is currently in remission after a years-long battle with oral cancer. Her husband, Bruce Paltrow—with whom she welcomed daughter Gwyneth Paltrow, 50, and son Jake Paltrow, 47—died of oral cancer at the age of 58 in 2002.
“Everyone is touched by cancer in some way, but it’s unusual for a couple to have the same cancer,” she told People in an article published Nov. 21. Blythe, who was diagnosed with adenoid cystic carcinoma in March 2018, recalled, “I remember I looked up at heaven and said to Bruce, ‘Are you lonely up there?’ It’s a sneaky disease. But I’m fine and dandy now. And I’m lucky to be alive.”
As the 79-year-old noted, she was working in London at the time when she “started feeling very woozy and I was forgetting everything. And then I felt a lump in my neck, right next to where Bruce had found his [in 1999].”