Timothy Spall was given just three days to live after cancer diagnosis

17 July 2023 , 19:30

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Timothy Spall was given just three days to live after being diagnosed with Leukaemia 27 years ago.

The actor, 66, was set to fly out to Cannes Film Festival to promote his film Secrets & Lies in 1996 when he received the diagnosis. He was 39-years-old at the time and was forced to skip the festival to undergo treatment.

“I was diagnosed with Leukaemia the day I was supposed to go to Cannes and when I saw everyone coming down the red carpet I was having my first chemo stuck directly to my heart when I was watching this all going on,” he said on The Graham Norton Show.

“It was nice because they were winning prizes while I was sort of doing an impersonation of not trying to peg it which I valiantly managed to achieve.”

Timothy, who is starring in BBC drama The Sixth Commandment, admitted knowing he might die gave him a feeling of “profundity“, that he soon grew bored of.

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Timothy Spall was given days to live (Getty Images)

He added: “When you’re in a state of not knowing whether you’re going to live or die or not, you’re in a state of profundity. So I remember going out to the park in between treatments and looking at a tree and for the first time really thinking what an amazing thing it was.

“And for about 10 minutes I thought that is a really nice tree. And then after a while I did it again and after a while I thought, ‘you know, this profundity thing is a bit over-rated’.”

Timothy was given the diagnosis when he was 39 (BBC/Wild Mercury/Amanda Searle)

The actor, who plays Peter Farquhar in a dramatic adaption of the true story of the teacher's tragic murder, explained he knew he was getting better when he started being “petty“ with his family and friends. “So when I got better and started being petty and snapping at the people I loved and shouting at people in traffic jams and being ridiculous, funny and scatological, I knew I was getting better,” he said.

“Because when you’re dying you tend to be profound. So never fear being a petty fool. It means you ain’t dying.” Timothy was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukaemia.

According to the NHS, Leukaemia is cancer of the white blood cells. Acute leukaemia means it progresses quickly and aggressively, and usually requires immediate treatment.

The symptoms of the disease include looking pale, feeling weak, frequent inflections and unusual and frequent bruising or bleeding and usually develop over a few weeks and become worse over time.

Actor Timothy said that he first noticed symptoms of having the disease when he found himself becoming increasingly tired all of the time and spotted mysterious bruises were appearing all over his body. When the doctor checked him, he was shocked to discover that he had purple and red patches inside of his mouth.

Speaking of his diagnosis, Timothy said: ”I asked the doctor two questions. I said, ‘Am I going to die?’ He said ‘No, no. They can do marvellous things these days'.

”The other question was, ‘Will it mess up my career?'” He later confessed that he hated wife Shane watching him ”turn into this old man with no hair” during his treatment and said he felt as though he was imposing his decline on her.

Thankfully for the star, the treatment worked and within three months and after two courses of chemotherapy, he was given the all-clear and placed into remission.