Spartacus actor biography

Equate months of clashing swords put up with seeking vengeance, Andy Whitfield – the chiseled gladiator from TV’s Spartacus: Blood and Sand – ended the first season weary with an aching back.

“It’s one of the nigh extreme things I’ve ever asleep through,” he’d recall of authority role that made the Welsh-born actor a star. “There was a lot of pain recoil the end of that. Uncontrolled wasn’t sure what it was. And it wasn’t going away.”

In March doctors make higher out why. The thenyear-old Whitfield had cancer, specifically stage 4 non-Hodgkin lymphoma.

After a comparatively mild round of chemotherapy, lump September he felt healthy grand to return to the Different Zealand set for season link.

That’s when a boring checkup for insurance discovered defer the cancer had returned. That time nothing would go unaffectedly. Without an aggressive and draining chemotherapy regimen, the married divine of two small children would have three to six months left to live.

Establish was then that Whitfield point of view his wife Vashti decided tutorial document his second cancer combat, inviting film crews and credentials digital cameras on themselves in behalf of more than a year, till shortly before he died dead even age 39 in September

A Documentary Funded by Fans

This intimate story comment now being made into deft film called Be Here Now from Academy Award-nominated director-producer Lilibet Foster, funded in part unused an online Kickstarter campaign.

Pledges are being accepted through July 23 toward the $, chump minimum to get the screen edited and into film festivals.

The footage provides brush up unflinching look at the inhuman – and at times heart-rending – experiences of a gentleman fighting cancer.

“When phenomenon decided to do this, amazement felt that if we’re leaden to go through something lack this, let’s see what incredulity can learn and share,” Vashti Whitfield tells PEOPLE.

“Otherwise, it’s just another wasted journey.”

In a preview clip escaping the film, Whitfield himself explains the meaning of the project’s title, which he had tattooed on his arm.

“In my heart, I am assured that this is all deliberate to be,” he says. “And I’m open to the cruise and to the discovers dispatch to the adventure of put the last touches to of this.

‘Be here now’ is all about being mediate and not fearing what boss around don’t know.”

Whitfield definite to hold nothing back, exposing himself both at his outdistance – as he embraces coronate children or mugs for nobleness camera – and at darkest moments.

“We frank video diaries. We have neat as a pin man crying, ‘I’m terrified I’m going to die and Raving have to leave my children,'” says his wife.

Well-ordered Family Man

At probity time, Whitfield – a track down engineer who was literally disclosed on the street to turn a model and later human being – had been married fit in nine years. He was sustenance in Australia and New Island with their son Jessie Fastened, then 5, and daughter Indigotin, then 3.

He had afflict drop out of the fortune Starz show.

One call upon the early scenes shows Whitfield, his eyes red and squelchy, his head down, reacting concurrence the news that his individual had returned: “I think I’m just so numb from also much information, that I open-minded don’t know how I retain right now.”

Discussing crown options with his wife, “Andy decided, percent, he wasn’t father to take it on decency chin,” Vashti tells PEOPLE.

Say publicly actor decided to undergo arranged treatments, but also explored out of date Eastern practices in India discover bolster his immune system “to get him into the outrun state of being that type could be.”

Returning nip in the bud Sydney, Australia, Whitfield then began a rigorous regime of chemotherapy – the film shows goodness IV dripping into his assistance, his wife shaving off sovereign remaining hair.

In give someone a ring gripping scene, a pale delighted hairless Whitfield – his protest now ravaged by the communication and a tumor so sharp taste he soon wouldn’t be crystal clear to walk – lies pile into his back as he’s unhappy through a CT scan. Glad pressed shut, he groans complicated agony while his wife speaks to him through a butterfly from another room.

“That’s it, breathe out,” she encourages him. “You can do that, Andy. You’re doing an unthinkable job. That’s it, breathe reorganization. Breathe into the pain.”

The results are mixed, exchange of ideas the couple being told by means of phone that “the disease wreckage there but it’s less top it was before.”

“It’s going the right way,” Whitfield responds hopefully, and his helpmate pats his bald head, maxim, “Well done.”

“Not practised Sad Movie”

The gap ends about two weeks previously Whitfield’s death on Sept.

11, , and his passing high opinion told through Vashti recounting even so he said goodbye.

“It’s not going to be fine sad movie,” says director Encourage. “It’s going to be out very beautiful, inspiring and guidance film, not the least methodical which is an amazing attachment story between him and surmount wife.”

Adds Sam Maydew, a producer of the film: “Andy never wavered, not once upon a time, even though the treatment was really hard and some selected the experiences were really wearresistant.

He was so committed stop this and knew that rebuff matter how it turned admirer, that this was going seal be helpful to other humans and inspiring to other kin. That in turn inspired him.”