Celebs that hid scary cancer diagnoses

David Bowie

The untimely death of legendary musician David Bowie at the age of 69 shocked the world in January 2016. At the time, it was announced on his official Facebook page that he'd passed away as a result of "a courageous 18 month battle with cancer." Though the exact type of cancer wasn't revealed, a source close to Bowie suggested it was liver cancer.

This was the first fans had heard the singer-songwriter was even sick. However, when the video for Bowie's final single, "Lazarus," came out just days earlier, his devoted fan base had interpreted it as a knowing goodbye. At times in the video, the rock icon lies in a hospital bed while singing lyrics like, "Look up here, I'm in heaven." However, music video director Johan Renck later claimed that may not have been the intention. "To me it had to do with the biblical aspect of it," he said in the 2017 documentary, David Bowie: The Last Five Years (via The Guardian). "It had nothing to do with him being ill." Bowie himself may not have known his illness was terminal until after the video's concept was created. Renck added, "I found out later that, the week we were shooting, it was when he was told it was over. They were ending treatments and that his illness had won."