One in 8 women in the US will be diagnosed with breast cancer in their lifetime.
The good news is that early detection and treatment are only getting better. When breast cancer is caught in its earliest stages the 5-year survival rate is over 99%.
While most women know to self-check and be on the lookout for unusual lumps and bumps, this disease doesn’t always look the same — as is demonstrated by celebrities who’ve spoken out about their own diagnoses.
As Breast Cancer Awareness Month begins, here’s how six stars say they figured out something was wrong.
1. Amanda Peet
The “Something’s Gotta Give” actress revealed this week that she had found something “weird” months before she was diagnosed with breast cancer last fall.
“I was in my closet, I was probably putting something on and I felt a weird — it just didn’t feel like normal skin — but it wasn’t the frozen pea that everybody talks about,” Peet told Savannah Guthrie on the “Today” show.
She’d gotten an MRI and thought she was walking away with “a clean bill of health.” At a routine scan six months later, doctors noticed something suspicious on a ultrasound that was later confirmed to be cancer.
“I’ll never forget that moment,” she recalled. Peet, 54, received her first clear, cancer-free scan in mid-January after getting treatment.
2. Shannen Doherty
The first one to spot the “Beverly Hills, 90210” actress’s cancer might have been her pup Bowie.
“She would obsessively sniff right here on my right side for a long time before,” Doherty told Entertainment Tonight. “So, it made sense when I got diagnosed.”
Doherty was diagnosed in 2015 and underwent chemotherapy and radiation.
“When I got back from surgery, [Bowie] again was kind of right in this area,” Doherty said, gesturing to her right side.
“Then when I had my first chemo, she would sniff my entire body up and down. And she was always protective before, but she has become this crazy, protective dog. It’s hard to get close to me when she’s around.”
The actress fought breast cancer for nearly a decade, getting treatments including mastectomy and brain surgery, before her passing in 2024.
3. Melissa Etheridge
Etheridge was on a summer concert tour in 2004 when she felt a lump on her breast.
“I was like, ‘Whoa!’ And it was large!” the singer, now 65, said in an interview for AARP. “That little voice in the back of my head started going, ‘Is it cancer? Your father died of cancer. Your aunt died of cancer. Your grandmother died of cancer’ … You can’t quiet the voice.”
A biopsy confirmed it was breast cancer — which was shocking, because she’d recently had a physical that included a breast exam.
She underwent chemotherapy and by 2005, when her treatment was completed, she said she was “cancer-free.”
4. Kylie Minogue
In 2005, Minogue got a mammogram, which came back clear. She was 36 at the time and performing on her “Showgirl” tour. Current guidance recommends women get one once a year after age 40.
“They didn’t find anything,” the “Can’t Get You Out of My Head” singer told Ellen DeGeneres. But “a couple of weeks later, I found a lump.”
“Because someone is in a white coat and using big medical instruments doesn’t necessarily mean they’re right.”
She underwent a lumpectomy (removal of the tumor that leaves the breast intact) and chemotherapy, and was declared cancer-free in 2006.
In 2021, she was diagnosed with breast cancer a second time after it was detected in a routine checkup, she revealed in a documentary for Netflix.
“Early detection was very helpful, and I am so grateful to be able to say that I am well today,” she said in the documentary “Kylie.”
5. Kristen Dahlgren
Dahlgren, then a NBC News correspondent, was getting ready to meet friends when she saw a slight dent on her right breast in 2019.
Only a few years earlier, she’d reported on a story about lesser known symptoms — including dents, nipple changes, dimples, itching, swelling, pain and redness. That’s how she knew something was wrong.
“Beneath the dent, I didn’t feel a lump, but something I might describe as a ‘thickening,’” Dahlgren wrote. “It just felt different than everywhere else.”
She was diagnosed with Stage 2 breast cancer and treated it with chemotherapy, radiation and surgery. By 2024, her cancer was in remission. She left her career in journalism to launch a cancer vaccine nonprofit, now the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy.
6. Nicole Eggert
Nicole Eggert noticed severe changes in her health in December 2024. She was gaining weight and feeling fatigued, she told Inside Edition. She initially thought it was due to menopause.
The “Baywatch” star was also feeling pain in her breast — then, she found a large lump during a self-exam. “When I felt it my heart dropped and I was like ‘Oh my god.’”
A mammogram confirmed she had Stage 2 breast cancer, a rare form called invasive cribriform carcinoma, which was harder to spot due to scar tissue from her breast implants.
“If I didn’t have them, and I had my smaller, natural breasts, I am sure I would have felt it much sooner,” Eggert said. “Getting them was a huge mistake.”
She ultimately got a mastectomy, and underwent chemotherapy and radiation. Eventually, she had the other breast removed, then had a full hysterectomy in March 2026 after test results showed “early signs of more cancer.”
