Amanda Peet, 54, reveals private breast cancer battle while both her parents were in hospice care

Amanda Peet learned she had breast cancer 'last fall' after a 'routine scan' showed unusual changes.

In an essay published in The New Yorker on Saturday, the 54-year-old Something's Gotta Give star went into detail about her experience from diagnosis to treatment.

'For many years, I've been told that I have 'dense' and 'busy' breasts - not as a compliment but as a warning that they require extra monitoring,' Peet wrote.

'I had been seeing a breast surgeon every six months for checkups. The Friday before Labor Day, I went for what I thought would be a routine scan.'

She added that her doctor 'didn't like the way something looked on the ultrasound,' and ordered that a biopsy be done.

Peet, whose Your Friends & Neighbors co-star Olivia Munn revealed her own breast cancer diagnosis in 2024, had a premonition something was wrong judging by her physician's next response.

'After the procedure, she said that she would walk the sample over to Cedars-Sinai and hand-deliver it to Pathology. That's when I knew,' Peet said.

Her doctor shared the results with her the next day. 'The tumor 'appeared' to be small, but I would need an MRI after the holiday weekend to determine 'the extent of disease.''

In the meantime, Peet was facing another heartache as both of her parents were in hospice care.

The actress, who currently stars on the Apple TV+ series Your Friends & Neighbors, has a sister, Alisa Peet, who is a doctor.

'Our parents, long divorced, were both in hospice, on opposite coasts,' Peet recalled.

'Our mother's had started in June, but our father's was only a week in, so we hadn't expected him to go first. I flew to New York. I didn't make it before my father took his last breath, but I got to see his body before it was taken from his apartment.'

Once Peet got back to Los Angeles to be with her mother, she learned that she had Stage 1, hormone-receptor-positive (HR+), HER2-negative breast cancer, which is an early stage tumor.

'I was happier than I'd been pre-diagnosis, when I was just a regular person who didn't have cancer,' shared Peet, who is married to Game of Thrones co-creator David Benioff and mother to their three children, Frances, 19, Molly Jane, 15, and Henry, 11. 'But after about 10 minutes, I remembered that I still needed the MRI and regressed to baseline terror.

'[My doctor,] Dr. K., said that the radiologist would check my lymph nodes, as well as 'the left side for any surprise findings' and call with the results within a week. It was dawning on me that cancer diagnoses come in a slow drip.'

A second mass was detected in Peet's breast but her doctor told her it was benign so it would only require a lumpectomy and radiation rather than chemotherapy or a mastectomy.

Peet decided not to tell her mother about her diagnosis or her father's death as she was in the last stages of Parkinson's disease.

She took medicine for her anxiety. 'I sucked on little chips of Ativan all day, but my blood pressure was so jacked they didn't even register,' she said.

'The morphine was taking forever to kick in, and she was looking at the ceiling and whimpering, so I climbed onto her rented hospital bed to get in her line of vision,' Peet said of her final moments with her mother.

'We locked eyes and she quieted down, and then she and I continued to stare at each other for what felt like several minutes.'

Peet went on, 'I thought of my teen improv class, which she had found for me when we moved back to New York from London. In improv, even if the given circumstances defy logic, you and your scene partner have to stick to them.

'I wasn't sure whether my mom knew that she was looking at me or whether I was just a constellation of interesting, disembodied shapes. I said 'howdy doodle' - that's how she often greeted me. But then I realized that she was communing without words, and I followed suit. Time was running out, and, besides, I had already told her everything.'

In 2024, Peet's Your Friends & Neighbors co-star Olivia Munn revealed she had been diagnosed with 'aggressive' luminal B breast cancer that required five surgeries, including a double mastectomy and hysterectomy.

Munn, who is in remission and considers herself cancer-free, bravely bared her mastectomy scars for a SKIMS ad during Breast Cancer Awareness Month in October 2024.

In an interview with Today at the time, Munn said the campaign initially wasn't supposed to be about her scars - until she chose to embrace them.

She said, 'When Skims approached me to do this campaign, it was just to do their shapewear and their new leggings, and it wasn't about my scar at all.'

Meanwhile, Peet's BFF, Sarah Paulson, has commended the star for her 'gorgeous essay.'

'My best friend, Amanda Peet… has written the most profoundly gorgeous essay about the loss of her parents, while dealing with a breast cancer diagnosis,' Paulson wrote on Instagram on Saturday.

'@newyorkermag has published it today, and I'm screaming from the rooftops with joy. I hope you all take the time to read it.'

'If you are running around and doing other stuff, I did the audio recording and you can listen to me try to do the piece justice. My friend is a @newyorkermag essayist. How outrageously groovy is that? Bird, I love you beyond.'

Other celebrities flocked to the comments section to echo that sentiment.

'Going to read now!!' Naomi Watts wrote.

Rose Byrne let people know she already had 'read [the essay] this morning' and found Peet's story 'so extraordinary.'

Ali Wentworth added, 'It's a beautifully written piece. All too familiar. Give Amanda a huge hug for me!'