Amanda Peet has revealed the heartbreaking events that unfolded in the weeks after she was diagnosed with breast cancer.
The 54-year-old actor, known for his roles in The whole nine meters and Your friends and neighborswrote about being diagnosed with stage 1 breast cancer in August 2025, when her parents were receiving end-of-life palliative care, in a vulnerable essay published in The New Yorker.
In the article, titled “My Ativan Season,” Peet explained that she attended a semi-annual checkup to monitor her breasts when her doctor discovered a tumor.
“For many years, I have been told that I have 'dense' and 'busy' breasts, not as a compliment but as a warning that they require additional monitoring,” she wrote.
“I visited a breast surgeon every six months for check-ups. Dr. K. used to chat with me while she examined me, but this time she was silent.”
Peet said that shortly after learning his own diagnosis, he discovered his father's health was rapidly declining.
“My sister called: our father was about to die. Our parents, long divorced, were both in hospice, on opposite coasts. Our mothers had started in June, but our father's was only a week into it, so we weren't expecting him to go first,” she wrote.
He fatal attraction The actress noted that while “my mind should have been flooded with memories” of her father after his death, her mind was consumed by thoughts about her own health.
“As soon as my father's corpse disappeared from sight, I was able to panic again about my cancer,” she wrote.
Peet learned soon after that her cancer was treatable and that a separate growth found in her other breast was benign.
She decided not to share the news of her diagnosis with her mother, who was in the final stage of Parkinson's disease, because it could have confused her even more.
“She still recognized me and sometimes answered 'yes' or 'no' to my questions, but she always had a blank look on her face,” Peet explained.
Peet then recalled that in the weeks after her first clear MRI, the hospice nurse informed her that her mother was about to die.
“I wasn't sure if my mother knew she was looking at me or if I was just a constellation of interesting, disembodied shapes. I said 'hello doodle,' that's how she often greeted me. But then I realized she was communicating without words, and I followed her lead. Time was running out, and besides, I'd already told her everything.”
He 2012 The actress also spoke about revealing her breast cancer diagnosis to her three children, whom she shares with her husband, screenwriter David Benioff, including daughters Frances, 19, and Molly, 15, and son Henry, 11.
“Molly cried and Frankie, who was FaceTiming from her college playground, put her hand over her mouth and held it there until she could process the excellent part of the news: that it looked like I was in Stage 1 and wouldn't need chemotherapy,” he said.
“They both feared that we would continue to withhold information or sugarcoat my prognosis,” he added. “My daughters were on the cusp of adulthood. If we were going to stay close, to know each other deeply throughout life, we were going to have to learn to have difficult conversations.”
