Ben Stiller Reveals Prostate Cancer Diagnosis To Howard Stern

On Tuesday’s Howard Stern show, the “Night At The Museum” star, Ben Stiller, revealed he had prostate cancer two years ago. At the age of 48, Stiller was diagnosed with the kind that was “immediately aggressive” and had surgery to treat it.

Stiller was on Howard Stern’s SiriusXM show with his surgeon, Dr. Edward Schaeffer. This was the first time the actor opened up about the disease and his experience with it. He urges people to get tested at a younger again. He also posted an essay on Medium that shares links and information or PSA screenings.

Stiller’s doctor had been giving him a PSA test, which is a blood test for the prostate-specific antigen, for a couple of years prior to being diagnosed. When the doctor saw his numbers rise, he suggested that Stiller see a urologist. After an MRI and a biopsy, Stiller was told he had cancer.

“It came out of the blue for me,” Stiller said on Stern of the diagnosis. “I had no idea.”

Stiller wrote that he had a “robotic assisted laparoscopic radical prostatectomy,” and that Dr. Schaeffer got all of the cancer. He continues to get a PSA test every six months.

“Taking the PSA test saved my life. Literally. That’s why I am writing this now,” wrote Stiller.

“I have no history of prostate cancer in my family and I am not in the high-risk group, being neither — to the best of my knowledge — of African or Scandinavian ancestry. I had no symptoms,” Stiller writes.

“What I had — and I’m healthy today because of it — was a thoughtful internist who felt like I was around the age to start checking my PSA level, and discussed it with me. If he had waited, as the American Cancer Society recommends, until I was 50, I would not have known I had a growing tumor until two years after I got treated. If he had followed the US Preventive Services Task Force guidelines, I would have never gotten tested at all, and not have known I had cancer until it was way too late to treat successfully.”