10 Celebrities Who Battled Breast Cancer

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Diahann Carroll (diagnosed 1998 at 63)

For Grey’s Anatomy scene-stealer Diahann Carroll, who played the mother of Dr. Preston Burke on the TV hospital drama, breast cancer came at a very common age for U.S. women—her early 60s. But Carroll (who in 1968 became the first African-American actress to star in her own television series,Julia had no family history of the disease and was caught by surprise. She underwent a lumpectomy and 36 radiation treatments and then went on the road to urge more postmenopausal women to get tested. In 2008 she released the tell-all book, The Legs Are the Last to Go: Aging, Acting, Marrying & Other Things I Learned the Hard Way.