Michael Douglas is admitting that he was lying about having throat cancer when he made those comments about having an HPV strain from oral sex. It turns out Douglas actually had tongue cancer.
E! Online reports that the candid star opened up to Samuel Jackson on the U.K. talk show This Morning about his actual diagnosis.
"[The doctor] just took a tongue depressor and, I will never forget it, I saw this look in his eye," Douglas said. "And I went, 'Oh.' And they took a biopsy, and two days later, they said, 'You have cancer."
According to New York Daily News, the Behind the Candelabra star twisted the truth about his cancer diagnosis because tongue cancer can be disfiguring and he was in the middle of promoting Wall Street 2.
"There's no way we can cancel the tour and say we don't feel well," Douglas revealed. "I said, 'You've just got to come out and just tell them I've got cancer and that's it.'"
Douglas's doctor warned him that surgery for tongue cancer might result in the loss of his jaw and tongue. The doctor said, "'Let's just say it's throat cancer." He continued, "If we do have to do surgery, it's not going to be pretty."
Although Douglas was fortunate to not lose his jaw or tongue, he is now admitting that he did experience some physical changes from the cancer. "I lost a lot of weight," the actor said.
Douglas now has a reason to celebrate because he has cancer-free for two years. "With my type of cancer, if you're clean after two years, there's a 95 percent chance it's not coming back," the 69-year-old said.
In late August, Douglas and his wife Catherine Zeta Jones revealed that they were living separately after being married for 13 years.
Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.