How the Veep Star Survived the Worst Year of Her Life
“I HAVE A DIFFERENT kind of view of my life now,” says Julia Louis-Dreyfus after successfully battling breast cancer. “I’ve seen that edge that we’re all going to see at some point, and which, really, as a mortal person you don’t allow yourself to consider, ever.” How has her outlook changed? “I was a little more breezy before,” she says. Julia’s health crisis wasn’t the only difficulty she’s endured in the past year: Her half-sister, Emma, died in August at 44 after suffering a fatal seizure on a camping trip in the Sierra Nevada mountains. Emma was later found to have alcohol and cocaine in her system. “It was out of the blue,” Julia, 57, says. “Given the fact that heinous s--- came out, I would simply say I’ve kept this under wraps out of reverence for my dearest Emma. It’s been a very bad period of time.” But returning to work for the final season of HBO’s
Veep lifted her spirits.
She pronounced herself “so deeply grateful to be back together with all these superb people.”