8. Sir Roger Moore
Sir Roger Moore, a self-proclaimed hypochondriac and the longest-serving James Bond actor in history — he played the secret agent for 12 years, beginning with 1973’s Live and Let Die and ending with 1985’s A View to a Kill — faced one of his worst fears when he discovered he had prostate cancer in 1993. He later underwent a radical prostatectomy (removal of the prostate gland) and made a full recovery, but the experience changed him forever. Shortly after completing treatment, Moore left his third wife, Luisa Mattioli, for Kristina Tholstrup, a former neighbor who had survived a similarly life-altering bout with breast cancer a few years before.
In 2009, he wrote about the health scare and resulting fallout in his memoir, My Word Is My Bond. “I had plenty of time to think about my life and how close I had been to losing it,” he recalled. “It was not very admirable behavior, I admit, but the seeds for life change had been planted and were beginning to grow.”
Moore died of cancer at age 89 on May 23, 2017, in Switzerland.