Actor Richard Roundtree – who played tough-as-nails private eye Shaft – has revealed he suffered from breast cancer.
“I was thrown by the diagnosis. I had never heard of a man getting breast cancer,” Roundtree, 57, tells next week’s People magazine.
The cancer, diagnosed in 1993, responded to surgery and radiation, and Roundtree has been cancer-free for six years.
“When I tell other men, the reaction is, ‘Really?’ They’re shocked,” he said. “But I’m not embarrassed.”
Roundtree rocketed to movie fame in 1971 as Harlem gumshoe John Shaft in the hit “Shaft.”
But none of the villains Roundtree walloped in his action movies proved as tough as the ordeal he faced after finding a lump under his left nipple while taking a shower.
He went to his doctor for routine tests, and was shocked to learn the lump was malignant and the cancer had spread to his lymph nodes.
” I was numb … I had two young kids, a great marriage and a career that was cooking along. Suddenly, I’m looking at how quickly this all could end,” Roundtree recalls.
“Testicular cancer, prostate cancer like most guys get – I could understand it. But breast cancer?”
Surgeons performed a modified radical mastectomy, removing the star’s breast tissue from his sternum to the underarm, including the nipple and areola. Six months of grueling chemotherapy followed.
Roundtree kept his illness secret on the set of his next movie, “Seven,” fearing the news would kill his career.
Last November, he was declared free of the cancer, which is diagnosed in 1,400 men a year, and kills 400.
Roundtree came forward to bring the issue to light, hoping his revelation will encourage more men to get checked.