The death of actor Luke Perry shocked Hollywood and fans alike — but the fatal stroke that the 52-year-old suffered last week wasn’t his first brush with health problems.
Perry had a colorectal cancer scare in 2015, when doctors found and removed precancerous growths from the actor.
“If I had waited [to be screened], it could have been a whole different scenario,” he told Fox News in 2017 after making a recovery.
The close call forced him to nearly give up his love of red meat.
“I have significantly cut down on the amount of red meat that I eat,” he said. “I used to be like a steak-and-potatoes-every-night kinda guy, now it’s just for special occasions.”
Perry also smoked cigarettes as a youth and was known for lighting up on the “Beverly Hills, 90210” set and during media interviews in the 1990s.
“He’s smoking a cigarette,” a 1991 profile in the Florida Sun-Sentinel notes.
In a 1992 interview with Rolling Stone, the actor talked about his pre-fame job at a doorknob factory while “knocking an ash from his cigarette.”
It was not immediately clear whether he was still a smoker when he died.
Perry is survived by fiancé Wendy Madison Bauer, ex-wife Minnie Sharp, and his two children with Sharp: Jake, 21, and Sophie, 18.