At 75, Kathy Bates Is Thriving Despite Overcoming Cancer Twice & Other Health Issues

Jun 12, 2023 by apost team

Kathy Bates is a critically acclaimed actress and is also known for her great work as a director. The star has taken the world by storm with her incredibly long career spanning over 50 years. Her talents have been seen in a variety of projects and multiple genres in the acting world, including comedies, romance movies, thrillers and dramas.

Bates was born June 28, 1948, in Memphis, Tennessee. Proving her determination from the start, Bates graduated early from White Station High School in 1965. From the Broadway stage to the silver screen, Bates has made her presence known in the entertainment industry. She has not only showcased her incredible talents as an actress and director but has also used her platform for the betterment of others. 

By engaging with multiple organizations and talking about her personal struggles, Bates has helped raise awareness for a number of causes, most of which deal with health issues. Bates has always been honest about what it’s like being a larger woman in Hollywood and has voiced her opinions on the matter multiple times. Despite making a few headlines along the way, she hasn’t let anyone’s view of her appearance prevent her from continuing on with her long-lasting career, and she is still working in the entertainment industry to this day. 

Along with battling cancer and suffering other major health issues, Bates has accomplished a lot in her personal health journey. In 2019, the star reached a huge weight-loss milestone and lost 60 pounds from a simple change in health habits.

Bates was a member of the Alpha Delta Pi sorority and studied theater at Southern Methodist University before graduating in 1969. She decided to make the jump and moved to New York City in 1970 to officially pursue acting as a career. Shortly afterward, she began acting in minor stage roles before landing her first film feature in 1971 in “Taking Off.” 

The actress seemed to have hit her stride as she continued to work throughout the 1970s and 1980s, landing both roles in movies and on the Broadway stage, such as the 1976 production of “Vanities.” Bates continued working before finally hitting her breakthrough with her performance in the psychological thriller “Misery” in 1990. The movie, based on the book “Misery” by Stephen King, was a commercial and critical success that received widespread attention. 

Bates quickly began receiving great praise from critics and plenty of award nominations and wins as she continued making waves in Hollywood. “Misery” earned the star her first major awards, and she took home an Academy Award for Best Actress, and a Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Motion Picture in the Drama category, both in 1991. Bates also received the Chicago Film Critics Association Award for Best Actress and Dallas-Fort Worth Film Critics Association Award for Best Actress in 1990 for the same movie.

Bates’ career had only just begun, and her success in movies based on books continued. It seemed fitting as her grandfather, Finis L. Bates, was an author, so the gravitation toward literature and the arts was in her blood. 

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She starred in “Fried Green Tomatoes” in 1991, a movie based on the novel “Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe” by actress Fannie Flagg. Bates later played the title character in “Dolores Claiborne,” another Stephen King adaptation, in 1995. This was also the year that Bates decided to move from in front of the camera to behind the screen, and she picked up work as a director on many television shows, including “Great Performances,” “Homicide: Life on the Street” and “NYPD Blue.”

Along with directing television series, Bates began picking up more roles by acting in them too, as well as continuing her already-established career as a film actress. She won her first Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Miniseries or Television Movie in 1997 for her work in “The Late Shift.” Bates had a remarkable range in her repertoire, and she consistently proved herself as a worthy actress in any project. 

She gained even more recognition from her role as Molly Brown in the romance film “Titanic” in 1997, which was directed by James Cameron and also starred Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet. The movie was one of the most successful of its time and became the highest-grossing film of all time worldwide in 1998, and is still considered a classic. The film’s success was only beaten by another Cameron film, “Avatar,” which surpassed the previous film’s box-office success in 2010. Today, “Titanic” is No. 4 on the list of highest-grossing movies, surpassed only by "Avatar," “Avengers: Endgame” and “Avatar: The Way of Water." 

With more and more people recognizing Bates for her incredible acting abilities, it was only a matter of time before her body became a hot topic in news outlets. Her role in the 2002 comedy-drama movie “About Schmidt” featured Bates completely nude in one scene, and it received significant attention from film critics and audiences. During an interview with Hello! Magazine, Bates talked about what it was like being a woman of her size in the spotlight. “People either laugh or cheer,” Bates said. “I think there are a lot of women in the audience who are thrilled to see a real woman up on the screen in all her glory.”

This wasn’t the first time Bates’ appearance became a topic of conversation. Following her feature film debut back in 1971, the actress faced rude comments and criticism from casting agents who voiced that they didn’t think she was attractive enough to play certain roles. “I was never an ingenue,” Bates said. “I’ve always just been a character actor. When I was younger, it was a real problem because I was never pretty enough.” 

These comments impacted not only Bates’ potential career opportunities but her own self-worth. “It was hard, not just for the lack of work, but because you have to face up to how people are looking at you,” she explained. Despite what anyone had to say about her, Bates’ success was undeniable, and she persevered. She played more supportive roles in a plethora of movies, including “Failure to Launch” in 2006, “P.S. I Love You” in 2007 and “The Blind Side” in 2009. 

She made her feature film directorial debut in 2006 with “Have Mercy,” a movie she also co-starred in alongside Melanie Griffith. She was later reunited with her previous co-stars, DiCaprio and Winslet, for the romantic drama “Revolutionary Road” in 2008.

Her consistent work in comedies paid off as Bates earned even more recognition and success as her career continued into the 2010s. She appeared in the film “Valentine’s Day” in 2010 and later picked up a recurring guest role in “The Office” from 2010 until 2011. Bates won her first Emmy Award in 2012 in the Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy Series category from her guest appearance on “Two and a Half Men” the same year.

In 2013, Bates began her time on the anthology horror television series “American Horror Story,” which earned the actress her second Emmy Award the following year. Each season of the show has a new theme and is its own self-contained miniseries consisting of a different set of characters and storylines from other seasons, although they sometimes interweave with each other. Many of the actors on the show, including Evan Peters and Sarah Paulson, are in multiple seasons, although they play different characters in each season. Bates starred in “Coven,” “Freak Show,” “Hotel” and “Roanoke.”

Bates received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in September 2016 for her work in the film industry. Her career has been incredibly successful and bountiful as the years have gone by, with some of her most recent work being in “The Highwaymen” in 2019, which earned the star more Golden Globe and Academy Award nominations.

Despite being very vocal about her personal struggles, especially with her health, not much about Bates’ personal life has been made public. She was married to actor Tony Campisi from 1991, and the two stayed together for six years before divorcing in 1997.

Bates, along with 48 other celebrities, appeared in a video produced by Ryan Murphy for the Human Rights Campaign. The video was made to honor the victims of the Orlando nightclub shooting on June 12, 2016. The Human Rights Campaign has declared itself as the largest LGBTQ+ civil rights organization in the United States and released the tribute video to honor those in the community.

Bates has dealt with some pretty serious health issues over the years. She was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in 2003 and later diagnosed with breast cancer in 2012. It wasn’t until many years later that she was finally comfortable enough to open up to the public about her struggles following surgeries and treatments. 

“I continued to work right after the operation, doing ‘Little Black Book’ with Brittany Murphy,” Bates told People in August 2018. “My agent at the time was very old-school and didn’t want me to be the poster child for ovarian cancer. I didn’t want anyone to know, but it really took a lot out of me.”

People reported that the actress had a double mastectomy because of her family’s history with cancer following her breast cancer diagnosis. Bates beat cancer twice and is currently cancer-free, but her health struggles haven’t stopped. 

The actress was diagnosed with lymphedema, a disease commonly caused by the removal of lymph nodes during cancer treatment, shortly after winning her second battle with cancer. “It’s a souvenir you definitely don’t want,” Bates said. “I really felt that life was over for me. I probably wouldn’t work again, and I was angry for a long time.”

Bates has since been working as an advocate for the Lymphatic Education and Research Network to raise awareness about the disease. In March 2021, the organization posted a photo of Bates to Instagram with a quote from the actress: “We are united in dreaming of a cure.” Although there is no cure yet, Bates has found a way to deal with the pain through exercise, a healthy diet and by wearing compression sleeves on her arms, according to People. She has also encouraged others to stop “worrying about what you look like” and “instead, keep everything working and in good order.”

Bates has persisted with her healthy diet and routine exercise to not only manage her lymphedema diagnosis but her health in general. The actress lost an astonishing 60 pounds and has been given a rejuvenated view of life. “This is the best health I’ve been in in years and I’m so grateful,” Bates said during an interview with Extra TV in March 2019. “It’s a miracle.” She went on to explain how diabetes runs in her family so she wanted to lose weight and get healthy as a way to prevent herself from succumbing to the disease. 

“After you’ve maybe been eating for 15 or 20 minutes, you experience an involuntary sigh,” she explained. “It’s communication between your stomach and your brain telling you that you’ve had enough.” Bates further explained how waiting just a few minutes after finishing a meal helped her realize that she was satisfied and didn’t need to eat more.

Bates also talked more about battling cancer and her diagnosis of lymphedema and how her mindful eating habits have helped ease the pain the disease causes. She has continued to use her platform to raise awareness about the topic. “I want people to know what it is so they can get treatment early before it progresses to its most difficult stages,” Bates said.

The star talked more about her new eating habits with Hello! Magazine in March 2019. “The trick is to pay attention to that and push your plate away,” she said, referring to the notion of paying attention to your fullness after eating. “I don’t like the word willpower, but I like the word determination.”

“Mindfulness” was the key to losing weight for Bates, as she explained in an interview with Us Weekly in January 2019. This simple trick, along with incorporating some exercise, helped the star lose 60 pounds, and she has continued to stay in fantastic shape ever since.

Bates has had quite an impactful life as her career in the entertainment industry spans over five decades. She has made long-lasting impressions on others through her work as an actress and director and has also raised awareness for great causes through her work with multiple organizations. Bates has beaten cancer twice, learned to manage her lymphedema, and has even lost 60 pounds on her journey to health and wellness.

Are you a fan of Kathy Bates? Did you know about all the health struggles she's overcome in her life? If you found this article interesting, then be sure to pass it on to your family and friends, too!