7. Harry Belafonte
Harry Belafonte — actor, activist, and singer/songwriter (perhaps best known for “The Banana Boat Song,” with its famous “Day-o” refrain) — added “survivor” to his resume after he fought and beat prostate cancer in 1996. In the years since, Belafonte, 89, has been refreshingly candid about his ordeal, even going public about his post-surgery struggles with incontinence, a common side effect that Belafonte said he conquered in less than a year with exercises (such as Kegels).
But he wasn’t always so comfortable opening up. “The prostate is something that attacks that central part of the male body that men are very preoccupied with. Somehow, any disorder there means your life is over, you can’t be a man anymore, you are now something less,” he said at a benefit for the Hoag Family Cancer Institute in Newport Beach, California, adding that he hoped to change that perception. “If you’re going to have [prostate cancer], you’re going to have it. It’s what you do about it that makes the difference — how you conduct your life.”