Bruce Campbell, star of Evil Dead, Maniac Cop and Burn Notice, gave an undesired health update to his fans. Earlier this year, Campbell announced that he would be stepping back as an actor following a cancer diagnosis. Yesterday, on The Adam Carolla Show of all places, Campbell says doctors gave him roughly five years to live.
“I’m in a five-year prognosis,” Campbell tells Carolla. “This is what the type of cancer that I have, which I don’t want to get into, is the current thing is a five-year deal.”
Last March, Campbell told fans that he would have retreat from his usual roles, be it wisenheimer Evil Dead antihero Ash Williams to a staple in the convention circuit, after receiving an unfortunate cancer diagnosis. In an Instagram post, he said that the illness was “”treatable” not “curable.”” It was in the road up to promoting his latest film Ernie and Emma, which Campbell also directed, that grimly revolves around a husband spreading his wife’s ashes.
While Evil Dead hasn’t been considered “b-movie” fare for some time, schlock star is a crown Campbell wears with pride. The actor ascended playing the chainsaw wielding, boomstick firing Ashley Williams in the original Evil Dead trilogy and numerous video game and TV spinoffs. Like the Oldsmobile Delta Sam Raimi lost his virginity in, Campbell has made cameos in almost every Raimi production since, from Spider-Man to Xena: Warrior Princess. On top of sly appearances in numerous Coen brothers films, Campbell also stared in cult gems like Bubba Ho-Tep, Maniac Cop and The Adventures of Brisco County Jr.
For many, Bruce Campbell was a gateway into the world of horror and midnight movies. Mere seconds of his hammed up presence in larger blockbusters a cause for celebration. His particular career was captured in the charming 2001 autobiography If Chins Could Kill: Confessions of a B Movie Actor, which nestled in quite comfortably among my teenage DVDs and Jhonen Vasquez comics.
While Campbell’s large mug isn’t going to be a regular on the big screen going forward, he says he’s not going to spend his final years dying. “I’ve decided pretty specifically to live with it” says Campbell. “There’s a whole mental component. You start getting all this bad news and you’re starting breakfast with a shit sandwich with a side of what the fuck, right? For a couple of months as it all comes in. Then you deal with it and then you have to make this decision of, well, do I have to stop everything that I’m doing because of this… Cancer creeps me out because of the ancillary stuff that it does. You don’t die from cancer. You die from what cancer does to you. Right now, I’m between wax. I feel perfect.”