Celebrities With Gastric Cancer

The country music star was famous for the hit songs "Red Solo Cup” and "Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue (The Angry American)." His extensive singing and songwriting career earned him the 2020 National Medal of Arts. Keith was diagnosed with stomach cancer in late 2021 and underwent chemotherapy, radiation, and surgery. He started the Toby Keith Foundation in 2006 to provide housing for pediatric cancer patients. Keith was 62 when he passed away from the disease in 2024.

Millions of Americans grew up with the gentle life lessons on friendship and kindness he taught. The ordained Presbyterian minister created and starred in the children’s television show Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, which aired on public television from 1966 to 2001. Rogers died of stomach cancer in 2003 at the age of 74.

The fashion designer had a very rare form of cancer that attacks the peritoneum -- the tissue around your stomach. She died in 2007 at the age of 78. Claiborne built a fashion empire by creating stylish, affordable business-wear options for millions of women who joined the corporate workforce in the 1970s. Hers was the first company founded by a woman to reach the Fortune 500.

The iconic Hollywood star died in 1979 at the age of 72 after battling lung and stomach cancer. He portrayed dozens of cowboys and military men over a career that spanned 50 years. His on-screen persona was tough, brave, and almost always morally upright.  He won the Academy Award for Best Actor in 1970 for True Grit.

This pioneer of heavy metal music died at the age of 67. He became lead singer of the band Black Sabbath in 1980 after the departure of Ozzy Osbourne, and also had a successful solo career. He canceled a tour after revealing in late 2009 he was fighting stomach cancer and died less than a year later.

The Georgia actor already had an impressive resume of credits from the stage, movies, and television before he landed the role that would define his career: Dr. Leonard “Bones” McCoy, chief medical officer of the U.S.S. Enterprise. Kelley was 79 when he died of gastric cancer in 1999. He starred in the original Star Trek television series from 1966 to 1969 and in six Star Trek films.

An especially rare and aggressive kind of cancer called desmoplastic small round cell tumor took the life of this actress at age 30. She appeared on The Cosby Show in the late 1980s and starred in the ‘90s sitcom Family Matters. She had a tumor removed from her stomach in 1997 and died after the cancer came back the following year.

The Oscar- and Tony-nominated actor has survived cancer three times. He was treated for acute myeloid leukemia in 1989 and 1994, and had surgery for early-stage stomach cancer in 2016. The Japanese actor crossed over to international success with the 2003 film The Last Samurai, which earned him a Best Supporting Actor nomination. He was nominated for Best Lead Actor for his starring role in The King and I on Broadway in 2015.

His first major film role was one of his most acclaimed: the title character in Lawrence of Arabia, which earned him his first of eight Academy Award nominations. Gastric cancer nearly ended the English actor’s life at the height of his career in the 1970s. But he survived, and went on to perform in movies and theater for four more decades, until shortly before his death in 2013 at age 81.

The grandson of a slave, writer James Baldwin was a powerful voice of the civil rights movement in the 1950s and 60s. His best-known works include the novel Go Tell It on the Mountain, the play Blues for Mister Charlie, and the essay collections Notes of a Native Son and The Fire Next Time. He lived most of his adult life in France and died of stomach cancer at age 63 in 1987.

In the months leading up to his death in 1821, this French leader had severe abdominal pain, vomiting, and serious weight loss -- classic symptoms of gastric cancer. And an autopsy showed a large tumor in his stomach. Napoleon was a military leader who expanded French power throughout most of Europe. He was defeated by the British at the battle of Waterloo and died in exile at age 51.

Paris in the early 20th century was a magnet for artists and intellectuals, and she was at the center of it. Together with her partner, Alice B. Toklas, Stein hosted gatherings of some of the most famous creative minds of the time. She was a writer and poet in her own right who experimented with form and language. Stein died of stomach cancer in 1946 at the age of 72.

He was one of the most successful and influential movie directors of the 20th century. He made dozens of Westerns and war movies, and filmed documentaries for the U.S. military during World War II. Ford is credited with making John Wayne a star. He won five Academy Awards and was presented with the Medal of Freedom by President Richard Nixon. Ford died of stomach cancer in 1973 at age 78.

The Italian physicist is credited with bringing the world into the nuclear age. Fermi won the Nobel Prize in 1938 for his work with radioactivity and atom-splitting. He set off the first controlled nuclear reaction while working at the University of Chicago in 1942 and went on to help develop the atomic bomb. He died of stomach cancer in 1954 at age 53.

She won an Academy Award for her supporting role in 1952’s The Bad and the Beautiful, and she played memorable characters in It’s a Wonderful Life and Oklahoma. But Grahame is best known as a sultry femme fatal from film noirs of the 1950s. She had breast cancer in the late 1970s and was 57 when stomach cancer took her life in 1981.