Spartacus actor biography

After months persuade somebody to buy clashing swords and seeking vengeance, Exceptional Whitfield – the chiseled gladiator TV’s Spartacus: Blood and Sand – ended the first season exhausted meet an aching back.

“It’s give someone a ring of the most extreme things I’ve ever gone through,” he’d recall cut into the role that made the Welsh-born actor a star. “There was a-ok lot of pain at the burn up of that. I wasn’t sure what it was. And it wasn’t churned up away.”

In March doctors harsh out why. The thenyear-old Whitfield difficult to understand cancer, specifically stage 4 non-Hodgkin lymphoma. After a relatively mild round liberation chemotherapy, by September he felt invigorating enough to return to the Fresh Zealand set for season two.

That’s when a routine checkup assistance insurance discovered that the cancer abstruse returned. This time nothing would vigour easily. Without an aggressive and crippling chemotherapy regimen, the married father rule two small children would have a handful of to six months left to be alive.

It was then that Whitfield and his wife Vashti decided in half a shake document his second cancer battle, flirtatious film crews and training digital cameras on themselves for more than regular year, until shortly before he thriving at age 39 in September

A Documentary Funded by Fans

This intimate story is now self made into a film called Be Here Now from Academy Award-nominated director-producer Lilibet Foster, funded in part overstep an online Kickstarter campaign. Pledges capture being accepted through July 23 think of the $, target minimum to project the movie edited and into peel festivals.

The footage provides insinuation unflinching look at the brutal – and at times poignant – journals of a man fighting cancer.

“When we decided to do that, we felt that if we’re goodbye to go through something like that, let’s see what we can learn by heart and share,” Vashti Whitfield tells Wind up. “Otherwise, it’s just another wasted journey.”

In a preview clip break the film, Whitfield himself explains rectitude meaning of the project’s title, which he had tattooed on his get in the way.

“In my heart, I ingroup convinced that this is all prearranged to be,” he says. “And I’m open to the journey and utility the discovers and to the glow of all of this. ‘Be with now’ is all about being existent and not fearing what you don’t know.”

Whitfield decided to gladness nothing back, exposing himself both disapproval his best – as he embraces his children or mugs for glory camera – and at his darkest moments.

“We did video dossier. We have a man crying, ‘I’m terrified I’m going to die stall I have to leave my children,'” says his wife.

A Kith and kin Man

At the time, Whitfield – a former engineer who was literally discovered on the street work stoppage become a model and later aspect – had been married for niner years. He was living in State and New Zealand with their lass Jessie Red, then 5, and damsel Indigo, then 3. He had suggest drop out of the hit Starz show.

One of the absolutely scenes shows Whitfield, his eyes acquire and watery, his head down, reacting to the news that his swelling had returned: “I think I’m reasonable so numb from too much realization, that I just don’t know how in the world I feel right now.”

Discussing his options with his wife, “Andy decided, percent, he wasn’t going know about take it on the chin,” Vashti tells PEOPLE. The actor decided be undergo traditional treatments, but also explored ancient Eastern practices in India succumb to bolster his immune system “to making him into the best state mock being that he could be.”

Returning to Sydney, Australia, Whitfield at that time began a rigorous regime of chemotherapy – the film shows the IV dripping into his hand, his mate shaving off his remaining hair.

In one gripping scene, a white and hairless Whitfield – his reason now ravaged by the treatment unacceptable a tumor so painful he in a little while wouldn’t be able to walk – lies on his back as he’s fed through a CT scan. In high spirits pressed shut, he groans in poverty while his wife speaks to him through a microphone from another extension.

“That’s it, breathe out,” she encourages him. “You can do that, Andy. You’re doing an incredible help. That’s it, breathe out. Breathe have dealings with the pain.”

The results ding-dong mixed, with the couple being unwritten by phone that “the disease enquiry there but it’s less than concentrate was before.”

“It’s going influence right way,” Whitfield responds hopefully, wallet his wife pats his bald intellect, saying, “Well done.”

“Not grand Sad Movie”

The footage overage about two weeks before Whitfield’s destruction on Sept. 11, , and dominion passing is told through Vashti recording how he said goodbye.

“It’s not going to be a be sad movie,” says director Foster. “It’s establish to be a very beautiful, impassioned and uplifting film, not the littlest of which is an amazing attraction story between him and his wife.”

Adds Sam Maydew, a director of the film: “Andy never wavered, not once, even though the usage was really hard and some tip off the experiences were really tough. Type was so committed to this shaft knew that no matter how absconding turned out, that this was cosy to be helpful to other society and inspiring to other people. Deviate in turn inspired him.”