Tyler Mane's Shocking Cancer Journey Twist: The Blood Clot Scare
X-Men star Tyler Mane is opening up about a scary complication he experienced during the tail end of his breast cancer journey that he didn’t see coming.
“I went through four rounds of chemo, and they found the blood clot after I rang the bell. After they say, ‘All gone, all clear,’ and then I said, ‘Is it done? Is it really done?’ And then [the] blood clot comes. But we're dealing with it. I'm on blood thinners for that now, and it's better to get it taken care of and stick around than not,” he told Us exclusively on Wednesday, September 16, ahead of Breast Cancer Awareness Month.
Mane, 59, who’s known for his role as supervillain Sabretooth in the original 2000 X-Men film, explained that the blood clot was “the biggest eye-opener” during his cancer battle.
"That puts it into perspective real quick. My doctor got real serious real quick when we realized that we had a blood clot going on in two different places in my leg. It was from my ankle to about three-quarters of the way up my calf, and then it was also behind my knee a bit, and that's when, you know, you start thinking, ‘Are we taking care of this? And what does it take for something to break off and travel to your lungs or to your heart?’ That was probably the biggest eye-opener, I'd have to say. It's the blood clot,” he said.
In June, Mane shared that he had been diagnosed with a “rare” case of male breast cancer and was undergoing chemotherapy. He told Us that he’s “in the home stretch” of his battle and had 14 days left of radiation at the time of the interview.
“I can't wait,” he noted about finishing treatment.
Mane has a lot to look forward to.
He and his wife, actress Renae Geerlings, started a podcast, “Mane AF,” during his cancer journey. In each episode of the show, which launched August 27, the couple speak to celebrities and experts about midlife mayhem, from marriages to reinvention and everything in between.
Mane and Geerlings, 51, are also gearing up to be new grandparents. The couple’s daughter is pregnant, and they are thrilled to welcome a new addition to their family after losing both Mane’s brother and Geerlings’ father within the last year.
“I never thought that I'd be dealing with breast cancer and losing my brother this early, and so it's just all midlife stuff that we're all going to deal with at some point in time, and you just have to deal with it and get through it the best we can,” Mane said. “This year has been interesting, to say the very, very least. But that's a good thing. I guess it's OK to be a grandpa, but, oh, I don't like that word.”
Through it all, Mane has remained positive, although he admitted he “regularly” felt like he couldn’t handle chemo anymore.
“I just have the attitude. It'll take me down, but I don't let it take me down all the way because I realize this is a mental game, and it is something that I'm going to win. No one can stay positive going through cancer treatment 100 percent. There are going to be moments when you question it, question yourself, question your ability to fight the cancer off, question everything, [even] your mortality,” he told Us.
Mane is on the way to recovery, but statistics show that roughly 2,670 men will be diagnosed with invasive breast cancer and 530 will die from breast cancer in 2026, according to the American Cancer Society.
Mane shared one thing he wishes he had done differently during his journey. (After his diagnosis, he discovered he had the BRCA2 mutation that increases the risk of developing breast cancer and other cancers through genetic testing.)
“I wish that I would have had the genetic testing earlier, because then I would have gotten my butt in when I'd felt the lump, and then we may have caught this a lot sooner. Maybe I wouldn't have had to do the chemo. Maybe I wouldn't have had to do the radiation,” he admitted to Us.
The star also had a stern message for all the men out there about their health: “Be your best advocate.”
Mane stressed, “Get in there, get it checked. Worst case scenario, it's nothing, and they go, ‘Oh, you're worrying about nothing.' If it is something, have it removed immediately. Men get breast cancer. I think there's 2,600 to 3,000 cases a year. It's less than 1 percent of all the breast cancer cases in America, but over 500 men die from it. The death rate is really high because men do not catch it quick enough. So they're already in stage III, stage IV, and it's something that they just don't think about.”
He added, “You have to take care of yourself first because if something happens to you, something happens to your health; there's nothing else there. You're done.”
Mane first rose to fame playing Sabretooth in 2000’s X-Men and 2006’s X-Men: The Official Game before reprising the role in 2024 alongside Hugh Jackman and Ryan Reynolds in Deadpool & Wolverine. He also played Michael Myers in Rob Zombie’s 2007 reboot of Halloween and its 2009 sequel.
