In Mar. 2026, the entertainment world learned of unfortunate news, as Evil Dead star Bruce Campbell announced that he had been diagnosed with cancer ahead of his 68th birthday. Posting to Instagram, he did not specify what kind of cancer he has, noting that it is “‘treatable’ not ‘curable’ in a lengthy caption. While this meant scaling back on public appearances at conventions and other events, he hoped to get healthy enough over the summer to tour with his new movie, Ernie & Emma, which premiered in Medford, Oregon, in Feb. 2026 and will have a wider release later this year. Unfortunately, Campbell’s latest update on the matter did not improve the matter.
Speaking with The Adam Corolla Show, Campbell revealed that his doctors have given him a prognosis of about five years to live after announcing his cancer diagnosis almost six months ago. However, he wants to do everything he can to make the best out of whatever time he has left in life.
Campbell expressed that he has “decided specifically, though, to live with it, not die from it.” Noting that one can “go down a massive rabbit hole” and calling the rabbit hole for cancer “enormous,” he called himself a “tough old son-of-a-b***h” as part of his fight against the disease. Outside of the medical side of the diagnosis, he shared how “fascinating” it is due to how much it “messes with your head,” describing the experience as having a “whack-a-mole life.” Through all this, he has found a new sense of “appreciation and gratitude” for life, not wanting to waste a moment of the time he has.
Campbell is best known for his 45 years of work in the Evil Dead franchise, first playing the iconic Ash Williams in the original 1981 movie and reprising the role on four other occasions (including a cameo in the 2013 reboot). Starting off alongside a group of college friends and his girlfriend, Ash discovered an ancient text called the Naturom Demonto (Book of the Dead), awakening a terrifying invisible demon that possesses the students and turns them into cackling monsters known as Deadites. Tragically, Ash is forced to brutally dismember his friends and loved ones to stay alive.
This franchise was one of his earliest projects with his dear friend Sam Raimi, who was the director on well over a dozen movies that featured Campbell. This included cameos in all three of Raimi’s Spider-Man movies from the 2000s, as well as in his first MCU movie, 2022’s Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. Other notable credits on Campbell’s resume include Burn Notice (2007-2013), Escape from L.A. (1996), and Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs (2009).
The team at MovieWeb sends our best wishes to Bruce Campbell and those close to him during this difficult time.
- Birthdate
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June 22, 1958
- Birthplace
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Birmingham, Michigan, USA
- Birthname
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Bruce Lorne Campbell
