By Miguel Mike Medina
Photo Credit: Getty Images, Dia Dipasupil
Actor Joe Manganiello opens up about his health battle and how close he has come to death.
Manganiello, 49, looks and feels healthy today, but the last seven years have been tough. Manganiello seemed to have it all: career, money, and marriage, but no one is exempt from suffering. His health problems, which include an autoimmune illness, affected his relationships, such as his marriage to actress Sofia Vergara, with whom he spent years together.
He rose to fame after starring in True Blood and Magic Mike, and appearing in How I Met Your Mother and One Tree Hill.
Manganiello details everything in his new book, Bloodlines: A Memoir. He held nothing back in his interview with Men’s Health. Manganiello wrote the book like it’s an album.
“I wrote each chapter like it’s a song,” Manganiello said.
Manganiello had to manage other people’s feelings and not have to act or think like a victim. He had to become the resilient, gritty person he is now because people were slowly watching him deteriorate.
“No matter how much I was dying, I had to save a part of me,” Manganiello said. “As a man, my job is not to make other people’s lives complicated. It’s to make it simple.”
Manganiello was going to some of the best hospitals he could find. Doctors were taking care of him and giving him updates. No one knew what he was going through behind the scenes.
“It was brutal,” Manganiello said. “It’s insane to wake up and not know what’s wrong. The denial package came for me when I got cast as the main villain in Batman. Here’s the biggest role of your life. You just lost like 60 pounds in two weeks and cant walk and lost your voice and had a tube down your nose to pump out of your intestine into a bucket on the side of your bed because you cant process food. By the way, we’re going to need you in London next week to try out your super villain armor.”
The paparazzi wanted to know what was going on. Manganiello had to remove an appendix. He had a lot of fear about taking pain medication. Manganiello had to figure out weight gain, how many shoot days he’d film, and when to schedule surgery. Chronic pain influenced his training approach.
“I liked getting stronger,” Manganiello said. “I liked becoming a better athlete. I knew if I did those things, I’d end up looking the way I wanted. Thank God I approached it that way because when this disease hit, I didn’t need to look good. I needed to be strong to withstand the beating of seven years.”
Manganiello’s history of battling health and life in general goes back to his great-grandmother. Manganiello’s great-grandmother lost nine of her children to genocide in Armenia, and his grandmother battled lupus. Toughness runs in his family.
Manganiello had a follow-up surgery to reconnect his digestive tract, and now he’s off medication and symptom-free. He has a fiancée, and hopefully they can start having a family together. Manganiello is grateful to have a second chance in life.
Miguel Mike Medina is the publisher of The MMM Journal. He can be reached at medinamiguelmike@gmail.com and themmmjournal@gmail.com
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