8 Celebrities With Prostate Cancer Using Their Voice to Save Lives

At a Glance

• Going public measurably changes behavior: After Stephen Fry announced his diagnosis in 2018, Prostate Cancer UK recorded an unexpected surge in men coming forward to get checked.
• Almost every case here was found the same way: a routine physical and a PSA number that moved, not a symptom the man noticed.
• Al Roker and Harry Belafonte used their platforms specifically to reach Black men, who face substantially higher incidence and mortality.
• September is Prostate Cancer Awareness Month, which is the practical hook: a diagnosis story is only useful if it moves someone to book something.

There’s a specific reason to pay attention to celebrities with prostate cancer, and it isn’t curiosity about famous people’s medical records. It’s that when a recognizable man says the word prostate out loud, other men book appointments. That effect has been measured, and it’s large.

What follows is eight men who went public, with what each diagnosis actually looked like. Read them as a set and a pattern jumps out: almost none of them noticed anything was wrong.

1. Ben Stiller

Stiller was diagnosed in 2014 at 48, with no family history, no risk factors, and no symptoms. His internist had started taking baseline PSA readings at 46; the number climbed for about 18 months before an exam, an MRI, and a biopsy came back positive with a Gleason score of 7. He had a robotic radical prostatectomy and wrote about it in 2016 under the title “The Prostate Cancer Test That Saved My Life”.

Worth noting honestly: several doctors pushed back on his call for men to start testing at 40, arguing it would lead to overdiagnosis. That argument is legitimate. The value of his essay was less the recommendation than the fact that a 48-year-old with no risk factors said it happened to him.

2. Al Roker

The TODAY weatherman got his diagnosis on 29 September 2020, after a routine physical turned up an elevated PSA. He was 66. He announced it on air that November, calling it a “good news, bad news kind of thing”: caught early, but a little aggressive. He had his prostate removed.

Roker was explicit about why he went public. He wanted men to hear that 1 in 7 African American men will be diagnosed in their lifetime, against 1 in 9 men overall, and that the disease is very treatable when it’s caught early. He aimed the announcement at a specific audience rather than a general one.

3. Stephen Fry

Fry found out just before Christmas 2017 after a routine health check flagged a high PSA. He had his prostate and 11 lymph nodes removed in early January, then explained the whole thing in a 13-minute video in February 2018, describing his Gleason 9 cancer as “an aggressive little bugger.” He was 60.

This is the entry with hard evidence attached. Prostate Cancer UK later reported an unexpected surge in men getting checked following his announcement, enough to strain NHS diagnostic capacity. One man’s candour produced a measurable jump in early detection.

4. Rod Stewart

Rock stars with prostate cancer have produced some of the least sentimental public messaging on the subject, and Stewart is the reason. Diagnosed during a routine check-up in 2016, given the all-clear in July 2019, he revealed all of it that September from a stage, at 74, at the launch of a UK awareness campaign, alongside his old Faces bandmates.

His delivery was characteristically blunt: “I’m in the clear now, simply because I caught it early.” And on the exam itself, the line that got quoted everywhere: “Finger up the bum, no harm done. Guys, you’ve got to really go to the doctor.”

Rod Stewart performs at Ziggo Dome in Amsterdam on May 12, 2019. Paul Bergen/Redferns via Getty Images

5. Sir Ian McKellen

McKellen is here as the counterweight to the assumption that a diagnosis means an operation. Diagnosed in 2006 with low-risk disease, he told the Daily Mirror in 2012 that he’d had it for six or seven years and had never been treated for it.

“I have ‘waitful watching,’” he said. “I am examined regularly, and it’s just contained; it’s not spreading.” What he was describing is active surveillance: regular PSA tests, exams, imaging and biopsies, with treatment held in reserve. It’s now standard care for low-risk prostate cancer, and it’s the reason finding a cancer early no longer automatically means losing your prostate.

6. Robert De Niro

De Niro was 60 when he was diagnosed in 2003. His publicist said at the time that it had been caught at an early stage because of regular checkups, after an elevated PSA prompted a closer look. He was treated surgically and recovered fully.

It’s the least dramatic story on this list, which is the point of including it. The uneventful version is what early detection looks like: a scheduled appointment, a number, a procedure, and then twenty more years of work.

7. Arnold Palmer

Of the famous athletes with prostate cancer, Palmer did the most with it afterward. Diagnosed in 1997 after a rising PSA and a confirming biopsy, he chose a radical prostatectomy, then spent the rest of his life campaigning on the subject and urging men not to wait until their fifties to get checked.

He also built something permanent: the Arnold Palmer Prostate Center at Eisenhower Medical Center in California, plus the Arnold Palmer Pavilion in his hometown of Latrobe, Pennsylvania. Nineteen years of advocacy from a man who had already earned the right to say nothing.

8. Harry Belafonte

Belafonte was 69 when he had surgery in 1996. His cancer was caught through a routine visit where his PSA kept rising despite two biopsies coming back negative, which is a useful detail on its own: one clear biopsy is not always the end of the conversation

He then spent decades on outreach, focused specifically on Black men and the disease’s disproportionate toll on them. He also talked openly about incontinence after surgery, which almost no public figure was doing at the time, and made a point of saying that a prostate cancer diagnosis has nothing to do with your manhood.

Celebrities Who Died of Prostate Cancer

The list of celebrities who died of prostate cancer is worth sitting with, because it’s largely a list of men diagnosed before modern screening and treatment.

Frank Zappa died on 4 December 1993, at 52. Johnny Ramone was diagnosed in 1999 and died on 15 September 2004 at 55, after the cancer spread through his body. Dennis Hopper died of it in 2010, at 74. Their cases are not evidence that prostate cancer is usually fatal. 

Caught while it’s still confined to the gland or nearby tissue, five-year relative survival is above 99%. Once it has spread to distant parts of the body, it’s around 37%.

The difference between the survivors on this page and the men in this section is mostly timing.

What to Do With Prostate Cancer Awareness Month

September is Prostate Cancer Awareness Month, and it tends to generate a lot of posting and not much booking.

The men above have one thing in common that has nothing to do with fame: almost every one of them was found by a scheduled appointment rather than by a symptom. Stiller had no symptoms. Roker had none. Fry had none. De Niro had none. That’s the actual lesson, and it’s the reason a prostate cancer survivor is so often someone who went in when nothing was wrong.

If you take one thing from a month of awareness campaigns, make it a diary entry rather than a repost. Know your family history, know which decade puts you on the clock, and get a baseline number.

The Takeaway

Eight men, eight very different diagnoses, and one shared decision: to say it out loud when they could easily have said nothing. Fry’s announcement alone sent enough men to their doctors to overwhelm a national health service’s diagnostic capacity.

You don’t need a platform to do the same thing on a smaller scale. Telling your brother, your father, or your mates over a pint that you’ve booked a check does roughly the same job.

Start here: Prostate Cancer Symptoms: Early Signs, Risk Factors, and When to Get Checked covers which risk bracket you’re in and when the conversation should start.

Disclaimer: This article is intended for informational purposes only. Seek medical advice from a healthcare provider if you have any concerns about your health.