'I thought I might kick the bucket': Jeff Bridges thought he may die of cancer until a doctor said five words

The 74-year-old actor was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma in 2020 and then contracted Covid-19 while undergoing chemotherapy treatment. He has recalled going into "surrender mode" and accepting that it may be his time to die - until a doctor said a powerful five-word sentence to him.

The Big Lebowski actor told People magazine: "While I was sick, I thought I not only wouldn't go back to 'The Old Man', I thought I might just kick the bucket. It got down to that. I remember one doctor said ‘you got to fight, Jeff’.” He also told him he wasn’t fighting the disease in that moment.

Bridges added: “I had no idea what he was talking about. I was in surrender mode, just ‘everybody dies. This might be me doing that’. And out of that surrender, like I say, all of this intense love surfaced, and maybe that's what caused me to survive, I don't know. But I didn't relate to the fighting thing, more of a surrendering.”

The beloved actor, who has three daughters with wife of 47 years Susan Geston, had intensive physical therapy alongside his cancer treatment. He set himself a "little goal" for him to be healthy enough to walk youngest child Hayley, 39, down the aisle at her wedding.

He said: “I didn't know how I could do that, but I said ‘well, let's train. Let's put that as our goal.' So we worked on that. And turned out not only did I walk her down the aisle, but I got to do the wedding dance with her. Then I'd rush to my table and put my oxygen on!”

The tumour in Jeff's stomach was "9 by 12 inch" but had shrunk to the size of a marble by the time he filmed the second season of The Old Man last year and his oncologist now thinks he is doing well. He said: “I don't know the exact size of it. I get MRIs and all that down the line, but my oncologist says ‘you're looking good, man’. And I get all my blood tests and everything and everything's going real well."

The star added that has learned some vital lessons from his "fascinating" health issues.“ All of your strategies for life, how you work — all of those get heightened. And love, that's the word that comes to mind. To see how much I love my family and my friends and the nurses and doctors that were caring for me, and how much love is coming at me. So it just exacerbated love, basically,” he said.