Amanda Peet has been diagnosed with stage I breast cancer that is hormone-receptor-positive and HER2-negative. She is getting lumpectomy radiation treatment and is being monitored for dense breasts. She wrote an essay for the New Yorker about her health update and her parents’ death in hospice care.
In a moving New Yorker essay called “My Season of Ativan,” Amanda Peet talked about how she found out she had stage I breast cancer in 2025 during routine scans for her “dense” and “busy” breasts. The actress, who is best known for her roles in Your Friends & Neighbors and Something’s Gotta Give, saw a breast surgeon every six months for checkups. This led to an ultrasound and biopsy that showed something was wrong over Labor Day weekend. Her cancer was hormone-receptor-positive and HER2-negative, so she didn’t need chemotherapy or a mastectomy.
Peet’s diagnosis came at a time when both of her divorced parents were in hospice on opposite coasts. Her mother was fighting Parkinson’s disease, and her father died just before she could see him. She flew to New York, but she was too late to see her father before he died. Then she went back to Los Angeles without telling her mother about the cancer to protect her in her last days. Sadly, her mother passed away not long after Peet’s first clear scan after treatment in January.
After the biopsy, an MRI showed a second mass, which turned out to be benign. This meant that Peet could have a lumpectomy followed by radiation therapy. She talked about how radiation affected her, saying that her nipple burned like a “overcooked marshmallow” in the last stage, but that it was still manageable compared to other fears. Peet told her kids about the news only after she was sure it was treatable. She stressed the importance of being strong in the face of personal loss.
