Jeff Bridges is reflecting on his recent health battles with cancer and COVID-19.
The True Grit actor, 72, announced in 2020 that he'd been diagnosed with lymphoma. In March 2021, while undergoing chemotherapy treatments, he contracted COVID-19.
"The chemo wipes out your immune system and when COVID hit me, I had nothing to fight it," Bridges told E! News. "I was just really at death's door a couple of times there."
"I remember the doctors saying to me, 'Jeff, you gotta fight,'" he recalled. He said he thought he was "in surrender mode" but was able to change his mindset thanks to his medical team, trainers and family who "brought me back."
The Old Man star shared in September 2021 that he's in remission.
Having survived both cancer and COVID-19, Bridges said he is prioritizing his wife, Susan, whom he married in 1977 and calls "the love of my life," as well as their three daughters and their three grandchildren.
"So often things are right on our nose that we don't appreciate," he said. "But it turns out there are many positive sides in my life that came out of that experience."
Bridges just began appearing in commercials touting monoclonal antibody treatment for COVID-19, which he said helped him.
Strumming a guitar as he walks through the woods, he declares, "I love being alive, man!"