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Hollywood actress Amanda Peet reveals breast cancer diagnosis
'Both of my parents were in hospice, on opposite coasts. Then I found out that I had breast cancer.' the star of '2012' and 'Something's Gotta Give' wrote in an essay
- PUBLISHED: Mon 23 Mar 2026, 9:55 AM UPDATED: Mon 23 Mar 2026, 10:07 AM
Hollywood actress Amanda Peet has dropped the startling revelation that she is suffering from breast cancer.
In an essay titled My season of Ativan that was published in The New Yorker, the star of movies such as 2012, Something's Gotta Give and Brockmire wrote that "Both of my parents were in hospice, on opposite coasts. Then I found out that I had breast cancer."
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The essay also provides an intimate account of the actress' medical experiences, family challenges and medical treatments.
Peet, who had been undergoing biannual breast checkups, wrote that a routine scan ahead of last year's Labour Day raised a red flag.
"Dr. K. usually chatted me up while she examined me, but this time she went silent. She told me that she didn’t like the way something looked on the ultrasound and wanted to perform a biopsy," Peet wrote. "After the procedure, she said that she would walk the sample over to Cedars-Sinai and hand-deliver it to Pathology. That’s when I knew."
Poodles and pit bulls
The actress said she understood the extent of the cancer affecting her via an analogy involving canines.
"The next morning, I woke up to a text from Dr. K., saying that she had a preliminary report. The tumour 'appeared' to be small, but I would need an MRI after the holiday weekend to determine 'the extent of disease'. On Tuesday, we would also learn my receptor status, which indicates how tough your strain of cancer is."
"'It’s like dogs,' she explained. 'You have poodles on one end and, on the other, pit bulls.'"
That was when she had to confide in her family, including spouse David Benioff, the co-creator of Game of Thrones.
"I called my two oldest friends, who sped to my house. I called my sister, in Philadelphia, and my husband, David, who had taken our two youngest children—Molly, who was fifteen, and Henry, who was ten—to a soccer tournament," Peet wrote.
The actress added that she couldn't tell her mother about her condition. "My mom lived in a cottage twenty feet from our kitchen, but it didn’t cross my mind to go tell her because she was in the final stage of Parkinson’s disease. She still recognised me, and sometimes answered 'yes' or 'no' to my questions, but always reverted to an empty stare."
It was later discovered Peet's cancer was hormone-receptor-positive and HER2-negative, considered more favourable for treatment.
The loss of her father
And then came another body blow: the loss of her father in New York.
"I didn't make it before my father took his last breath, but I got to see his body before it was taken from his apartment," Peet wrote. "As soon as my dad's corpse was out of sight, I was free to panic about my cancer again."
Soon enough, Peet had to deal with making funeral arrangements for her mother, who was in her last days.
Eventually, Peet got to know that she had stage I cancer and wasn't going to need chemotherapy.
