"This was right before I had a big tour forWall Street, so we kind of said, 'There's no way we can cancel the tour and say we don't feel well,'" Douglas admitted. "I said, 'You've just got to come out and just tell them I've got cancer and that's it.'"

His doctor, who'd found a walnut-size tumor at the base of Douglas's tongue, warned the actor that he might not want to reveal that he had a disease with such a negative prognosis on the eve of a massive press tour.

"The surgeon said, 'Let's just say it's throat cancer,'" the Last Vegas star reveals, explaining that the doctor told him that if they had to do surgery for tongue cancer "it's not going to be pretty," and that Douglas faced losing part of his jaw and tongue."