By Kayla DeKraker
CHARLIE’S ANGELS star Cheryl Ladd needed all the support she could get during her breast cancer battle.
“Mine was an aggressive form,” she said at the PaleyFest 50th anniversary celebration of CHARLIE’S ANGELS. “I had wonderful doctors. But I was bald for quite a while. It was a humbling experience.”
The actress said that her husband, Brian Russell, was a beacon of support through the fight.
“I have a wonderful husband. All through it, he was there for me at every turn, and that makes a difference,” the 74-year-old explained. “Eventually, I started to get little sprouts of hair. It was like, ‘Oh, I’m getting hair!’ It was a long, long, hard road. But you just get through. You just get on with it.”
Ladd’s costar Jaclyn Smith could relate to her experience. She also underwent radiation treatment for breast cancer in 2002, per Fox News.
Related: ‘That Is All God’: CHARLIE’S ANGELS Star Cheryl Ladd Reflects on the ‘Amazing Gift’ of Life
“It just connects you because you know what they’re going through,” Smith said. “And that’s when I talk about the power of girlfriends.”
She added, “The first thing I did was send her my wigs. She was so brave. She did have a very aggressive form [of cancer].”
Breast cancer is unfortunately very common. MD Anderson’s website explains, “Breast cancer occurs when a cell in the breast mutates and starts multiplying rapidly. There are more than 275,000 breast cancer diagnoses in the United States each year. Fortunately, new treatments have pushed the disease’s five-year survival rate to 90%.”
Ladd previously called her friendship with Smith a gift from God.
“We see each other all the time,” she said in 2021. “I see her in LA all the time when I’m there. We have lunch and we hang. We talk all the time on the phone. We ended up being really good friends. Lifelong friends.”
Through the highs and lows of Hollywood, Ladd clung to her faith.
“It has been all of it. I knew who I was as a young girl. I would climb up the top of the tree and talk to God all the time. It has been an interesting path – a lot of good, a lot of bumps, a lot of tough, learning moments. He [God] was with me the whole time,” she said.
She added, “He lets us trip ourselves so we remember that He is in charge. I think that is a good thing, especially in our youth! When we aren’t exactly thinking everything through.”
It certainly sounds like faith and friends have kept Ladd strong through life’s rough seasons.
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