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 roles in The Whole Nine Yards and Your Friends & Neighbors, wrote about being diagnosed with Stage 1 breast cancer in August 2025 when both of her parents were receiving end-of-life hospice care, in a vulnerable essay published in The New Yorker.
In the article, titled “My Season of Ativan,” Peet explained that she attended a bi-annual check-up to monitor her breasts when her doctor discovered a tumor.
“For many years, I’ve been told that I have ‘dense’ and ‘busy’ breasts — not as a compliment but as a warning that they require extra monitoring,” she wrote.
“I had been seeing a breast surgeon every six months for checkups. Dr. K. usually chatted me up while she examined me, but this time she went silent.”
Peet said that shortly after news of her own diagnosis, she found out that her father’s health was declining rapidly.
“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 in, so we hadn’t expected him to go first,” she wrote.
The Fatal Attraction actress noted that while “my mind should’ve been flooded with memories” of her father after his death, her mind was consumed with thoughts about her own health.
“As soon as my dad’s corpse was out of sight, I was free to panic about my cancer again,” she wrote.
Peet learned shortly after that her cancer was treatable, and that a separate growth found in her other breast was benign.
She decided against sharing news of her diagnosis with her mother, who was in the final stage of Parkinson’s disease, because it may have confused her further.
“She still recognized me, and sometimes answered ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to my questions, but always reverted to an empty stare,” Peet explained.
Peet then recalled that in the weeks after her first clear MRI scan, the hospice nurse informed her that her mother was about to pass away.
“I wasn’t sure whether my mom knew that she was looking at me or whether I was just a constellation of interesting, disembodied shapes. I said ‘howdy doodle’ — that’s how she often greeted me. But then I realized that she was communing without words, and I followed suit. Time was running out, and, besides, I had already told her everything.”
The 2012 actor also discussed revealing her breast cancer diagnosis to her three children, who she shares with her screenwriter husband David Benioff, including daughters Frances, 19, and Molly, 15, and son Henry, 11.
“Molly cried, and Frankie — FaceTiming from her college quad — clapped her hand over her mouth and kept it there until she was able to process the excellent portion of the news: that it appeared I was Stage 1 and wasn’t going to need chemo,” she said.
“Both of them were afraid that we were still withholding information or sugarcoating my prognosis,” she added. “My daughters were on the cusp of adulthood. If we were going to remain close, to know each other deeply over the course of a lifetime, we would have to learn how to have difficult conversations.”