Breast Cancer Has Julia Louis-Dreyfus Thinking ‘How Best To Spend My Remaining Time’

By Shakiel Mahjouri. Published: 15 Apr 2020 11:49 AM

Julia Louis Dreyfus. Photo: People

Julia Louis-Dreyfus beat her stage 2 breast cancer diagnosis but the health scare has her thinking about mortality.

Louis-Dreyfus, 59, covers People‘s first-ever “Earth Day” special issue. The “Seinfeld” and “Veep” star reflects on her bout with cancer and how it has changed her perspective.

“I never thought I was immortal, but you don’t spend a lot of time thinking about the end of your life,” she says. “But once you’ve faced a near-death experience like that, you do begin to realize that, at some point, you’re going to be out of here.”

“We all are,” she adds. “So, how best to spend my remaining time on this planet?”

Appropriately, Louis-Dreyfus also touches on the harsh environmental impact of human activity and talks joining the Board of Trustees at the Natural Resources Defense Council, a top environmental advocacy group.

“I’m keenly aware of the burden that my children will have, and their children will have if this challenge doesn’t get met,” she shares. “We can do it arms linked.

“I had kids, and I wanted to take them to the beach. They’d just go down and play for an hour and a half. But there was a beach closure, and I thought to myself, That can’t be right. They close the beach because of pollution? It was happening in my own backyard.”