Michael Douglas details brutal stage four cancer battle and reveals how much weight he lost during chemotherapy and radiation

DAILYMAIL.COM • 9h ago

By JUSTIN ENRIQUEZ, US ASSISTANT SHOWBIZ EDITOR 23:46 06 Oct 2026, updated 23:46 06 Oct 2026

Michael Douglas talked candidly about his battle with stage four throat cancer.

The now 82-year-old acting legend’s newly-released memoir One Helluva Ride revealed that he had lost 40 pounds when he was ill over a decade and a half ago.

The husband of Catherine Zeta-Jones, 57, wrote that after receiving his diagnosis in August 2010, he had underwent seven weeks of radiation and chemotherapy which he had compared to ‘the seven circles of hell.’

Douglas said that he was ‘sallow and gaunt’ after just four weeks of treatment as he wrote: ‘At first, the pain was bad but manageable, but by the third week I was in real trouble.’

The Oscar winner’s cancer battle was not only tough for him but it was especially challenging for his entire family the actor said it brought ‘hard moments’ for them.

Douglas shares two children – son Dylan, now 26, and daughter Carys, now 23, – with Zeta-Jones as at the time they saw headlines which claimed their father was close to death.

I’m Andrew Court, LA Showbiz Editor and celebrity connoisseur.

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The couple tied the knot in a lavish ceremony in New York City back in 2000, after first meeting in 1996 at the Deauville Film Festival.

The Wall Street star wrote in the memoir: ‘The kids were too young to understand how these magazines operate, so it was traumatizing for them.’

The actor wrote that his main goal at the time was to ‘maintain normalcy’ with his children which included taking his youngest Carys to school every day despite it leaving him ‘so exhausted’ that he had to lie down on the couch for the rest of the day.

Douglas said that visitors would often find him in the same spot as he explained: ‘That couch had become my chair, my desk, my table, my bed, my life raft on a sea of complete exhaustion.’

The actor previously revealed that the type of cancer he suffered from had been caused by the HPV virus, which is a sexually transmitted disease and can be caught through oral sex.

He also recalled how his now late, acting lend father Kirk Douglas, kept his stoicism during his son’s cancer battle but did bring a day of levity as he dressed up as a clown at the hospital on Halloween.

Douglas wrote: ‘ In that moment it was the best gift he could have given me.’

After his recovery from the seven-week treatment, he found out from doctors that his cancer was in remission which was shocking news at the time.

He explained of the life-shifting moment: ‘I broke down crying. To say cancer humbled me would be an understatement. It made me more thankful for everything in my life.’

Despite the health challenges, there was one unforeseen positive of his cancer battle as he said enduring it gave him a sense of freedom.

Douglas wrote: ‘It’s difficult to talk about, but it felt like a rebirth. My priorities changed. Cancer showed me what family is. It made feel a love that I never knew really existed.

‘I saw everything a little bit clearer, and a little bit brighter, and became far more conscious of how I spent my time.’

Douglas’s memoir One Helluva Ride is at bookstores and online retailers where books are sold now.

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