Michael Douglas

Truth rating: 10

Michael Douglas

3:41 pm, October 12th, 2013

(Getty Images)

Michael Douglas battled tongue cancer — not throat cancer — he’s revealed in a new interview.

The actor made the surprising admission about his 2010 diagnosis in a British daytime TV interview with Samuel L. Jackson.

Douglas explains that his doctor, upon discovering a tumor at the base of the star’s tongue, recommended that he not go public with a disease associated with such a negative prognosis on the eve of his press commitments for Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps.

“This was right before I had a big tour for Wall Street, so we said, ‘There’s no way we can cancel the tour and say we don’t feel well,’” Douglas told Jackson. “I said, ‘You’ve just got to come out and just tell them I’ve got cancer and that’s it.’”

“But the surgeon said, ‘Let’s just say it’s throat cancer.’ I said ‘OK, you don’t want to say it’s tongue cancer?… Why’s that?’ and he said, ‘Well, if you really want to know why, if we do have to have surgery it’s not going to be pretty. You’ll lose part of you jaw and your tongue and all of that stuff,’” recalled Douglas.

And so the phony “throat cancer” story was born.

Douglas was given a clean bill of health in January 2011.

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