Amanda Peet is shedding light on the early warning signs of breast cancer, reminding women that the disease doesn’t always present as a physical mass.
During a recent appearance on the Today show, the 54-year-old actress shared that, months before her breast cancer diagnosis, she noticed a strange change in her breast while getting dressed.
“I was in my closet, I was probably putting something on, and I felt a weird — it just didn’t feel like normal skin,” Peet told Guthrie. “But it wasn’t the frozen pea that everybody talks about.”
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Pushing for Answers
Peet did what most of us would hope to do: She got it checked out.
“I went, and I even got an MRI, and then they sent me away. So I thought I had a clean bill of health, but they were actually watching it,” she said.
Six months later, she returned for what she thought would be a routine scan and was asked to have a biopsy. Not long after, Peet got the call no one wants to receive. She had hormone-receptor-positive, HER2-negative lobular breast cancer — fortunately, it was caught at Stage 1.
“I think about how lucky I was in so many ways,” she said. Peet later underwent a lumpectomy and radiation, and she received her first clear scan in January 2026.
A Season of Grief
The diagnosis arrived during an unimaginably difficult time for Peet’s family.
In an essay for The New Yorker, Peet wrote that her father died in New York just days after her initial biopsy. At the same time, her mother, who had Parkinson’s disease, was in the final stage of her life in a cottage just 20 feet from Peet’s kitchen in Los Angeles.
Peet admitted the sheer terror of her own mortality made it impossible to visit her dying mother next door.
“I didn’t have the space in my brain for both her disease and mine,” Peet wrote. “I couldn’t bear to see her until I knew that I wasn’t going to die right along with her.”
Peet’s story is a reminder that breast cancer doesn’t always start with a lump. If you notice any changes in your breasts or something just feels off for your body, it’s worth calling your doctor and asking for check-up.
