Stanley Tucci.Photo: D Dipasupil/FilmMagic
Stanley Tuccilost hissense of taste and smellwhile undergoingtreatment for tongue cancer. But now that he’s cancer-free, he says it’s stronger than ever.
“I got very lucky,” Tucci, 61, toldTodayhosts Al Roker, Sheinelle Jones, and Dylan Dreyer. “I can taste and eat almost everything now. In fact, my sense of taste and smell are almost heightened and more than they were before, oddly enough.”
He went on to reveal that he has a greater appreciation for food now.
“When you’re forced to go without something that you love — just like when you’re forced to go without someone that you love — you appreciate them, and or it, much more when you’re able to have it back or if you’re lucky enough to have it back.” he said.
In addition to his successful acting career, Tucci has become known as a celebrity foodie. He’s published two cookbooks of his own and can often be seen making recipes in his kitchen on Instagram.
“Food means everything to me,” Tucci said. “It’s sort of all I can think about.”
He also hosts CNN’s acclaimed food and travel series,Stanley Tucci: Searching for Italy, which will be back for a second season this year.
“CNN came to me and asked me to do this series a few years ago, and we’ve been able to make it happen,” Tucci added. “It’s been a lifelong dream of mine to explore the regional cooking of it in as much detail as possible.”
Slaven Vlasic/Getty
Back in October, Tucci revealed in his new book,Taste: My Life Through Food, that he wasdiagnosed with cancerabout three years earlier, after doctors found a tumor at the base of his tongue.
HetoldThe New York Timesthatthe experience of undergoing high-dose radiation and chemotherapy to eliminate the tumor was “horrible.”
Through the weeks of radiation, Tucci lost his appetite, developed vertigo and ulcers in his mouth and started having trouble tasting his food. Anything he consumed started to taste like cardboard “slathered with someone’s excrement,” Tucci said, and he worried he would never be able to taste again, even more than he feared dying.
“I mean, if you can’t eat and enjoy food, how are you going to enjoy everything else?” he said.
Never miss a story — sign up forPEOPLE’s free daily newsletterto stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer, from juicy celebrity news to compelling human interest stories.
Now, Tucci said he’s in remission. “Everything’s great,” he revealed onToday. “This particular kind of cancer, they actually have a blood test for it and I was just tested after I had a scan and got the more than all clear.”
Todayairs weekdays from 7 a.m. to 11 a.m. on NBC
source: people.com
