Actor Amanda Peet says she's always waiting for the other shoe to drop. Except last year, there seemed to be three different shoes, all dropping at the same time: Her parents, long divorced, were in hospice on opposite coasts, and Peet was diagnosed with breast cancer.
While waiting to hear how advanced her cancer was, Peet received word that her father was actively dying. She rushed from California to New York City, but it was too late.
Soon after, Peet learned that her cancer would be treatable with a lumpectomy and radiation. It was a relief — but she decided not to share the news (or her cancer diagnosis) with her mother, who was in the final stage of Parkinson's disease.
"It ... felt very strange to have that distance between us, because I shared so much with her and she was a very intimate person," Peet says.
Peet says she had "a lot of meltdowns" as she went through cancer treatment and came to terms with her mother's failing health, but she also had a lot of support — especially from her sister Alisa and her husband, Game of Thrones co-creator David Benioff. She describes herself as "cancer-free and extremely lucky."
"I felt like I had a team around me, and there were really beautiful things that came out of it," she says. "Even my mom's death. … It was very scary, but it was also very beautiful."
Peet first became known for her roles in the 2000s in films like The Whole Nine Yards, Igby Goes Down and Something's Gotta Give. In the current Apple TV series, Your Friends & Neighbors, she plays a former therapist who's struggling with aging, the loss of her career and her deteriorating relationship with her teenage kids. In the film, Fantasy Life, Peet plays a formerly successful actor who develops a connection with the 20-something former paralegal who's babysitting her children.
Peet recently wrote about her parents' deaths and her cancer diagnosis in a New Yorker essay titled, "My Season of Ativan."
Interview highlight
On relating to her character in Fantasy Life
We had a little premiere for Fantasy Life. And afterwards, there was a little party. And as I was leaving, an older, quite beautiful woman stood up from across the room and yelled, "Amanda!" And she made a beeline for me and sort of opened her arms and said, "I love —" And I thought she was going to say, "your performance," because we were at the premiere party. And instead she said, "I love your wrinkles." And I found that to be really depressing, actually. Like in the car going back to the hotel, I was like, wow, is it getting to the point where not taking away my wrinkles is as distracting as if I got a weird pull or lift or whatever.
I probably think about getting a facelift or something every other day, if not more. It’s on my mind constantly.Amanda Peet
On why she has not pursued cosmetic surgery
I probably think about getting a facelift or something every other day, if not more. It's on my mind constantly because a lot of my friends have done it, a lot of them haven't, but a lot of them have. … I can't seem to just think about a facelift and changing my face, it goes straight to thoughts about death … because it makes me feel I have almost like this superstitious thing, that if I were to actually do an elective surgery to look younger, my cancer would come back or I would get Parkinson's. … Even if it's just in a spiritual way, not a literal way, that you would get ill from having somehow lacked gratitude for having health at this point.
On staying with her father's body after he died
Sometimes I would have overwhelming feelings like that I needed to stay with the morgue tech so that they wouldn't hurt him or stop at Starbucks on the way back to the morgue. Two minutes later, I would feel more clinically about it. It was really interesting. My sister's [in] internal medicine, and it was really interesting because she was very emotional at first, and then when we left the building and we saw the hearse, I felt terrified that they were taking his body and weird feelings of not wanting to leave him. And she was like, "No, it's almost like the carcass of a car going to the baling press or something. Like she was much more able to recognize that we had crossed the threshold, at that point.
On appearing in an episode of Seinfeld as young actor
It was really scary because it was a really famous show and they were all really famous and I have really bad stage fright. There are a lot of rules for sitcoms. Like you have to be still and blank when the other person's delivering the punchline and I wasn't used to acting like that. At one point, Jerry [Seinfeld] kind of told me off and said like, "You can't do that when I'm saying my line," and I was like, "Oh god, OK!"
On her breakout role in The Whole Nine Yards
Bruce Willis and Jonathan Lynn really picked me out of nowhere. Like, I didn't have any credentials or anything. I hadn't done anything that would make me think that I was going to land this role. And I wasn't known for being funny or anything, so I just auditioned. I read three times, and the final two times I was with Bruce, and he picked me. And it was really insane and it changed everything for me. I didn't really just even think about the fact that it was a comedy. ... Jonathan Lynn said, "Just think of her as a cheerleader, except instead of cheerleading, she's doing contract killing." And so they were very supportive. I look back on it with a lot of fondness.
On the surprise success of Game of Thrones, which her husband David Benioff co-created
It was absolutely insane. And it was a very precious time. We were living in Belfast for the summers in Northern Ireland. We had little babies. We were always with David's [writing] partner, D.B. Weiss, and his wife, Andrea, and the four of us were thick as thieves living in Europe. … The kids went to daycare in Belfast. It was really incredible. … When [Andrea and I] first saw the dailies, we were in my apartment in Belfast and we thought the dailies looked horrific and stupid. And we literally were like, this is just going to be an embarrassment. That was the pilot of Game of Thrones, and boy, were we wrong.
On co-starring with Diane Keaton in the 2003 film, Something's Gotta Give
The thing about Diane when I knew her is I feel like, very similarly with my mom, I feel she was curious above all else. Like she was a woman who was interested and not at all preoccupied with how she was being perceived. And just such a maverick, kind of, and she was always so kind and hilarious and self-deprecating. Everything you would hope she was, she would be, she was.
Ann Marie Baldonado and Susan Nyakundi produced and edited this interview for broadcast. Bridget Bentz, Molly Seavy-Nesper and Beth Novey adapted it for the web.
Copyright 2026 NPR
