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American actor Edward James Olmos, 76, revealed that he has overcome throat cancer and that experience made him understand "how wonderful life is," according to media that picked up on Sunday what he said recently in a podcast.

"This is the first time I've come out publicly and I say it: I had throat cancer," said the actor born in California (USA) in a family of Mexican origin.

Olmos, who played the popular Lieutenant Castillo in the eighties series Corruption in Miami (Miami Vice), alongside Don Johnson and Philip Michael Thomas; and who in 1988 was nominated for an Oscar for Unforgettable Lessons (Stand and Deliver), told the podcast Mando & Friends that he was treated with radio and chemotherapy until last December and that sometimes his body was "sold".

Another of his unforgettable roles was that of the Blade Runner cop who puts Harrison Ford on the ropes during the investigation into the replicants.

"I was close to death," he said. One of the scariest things about the whole experience was when the five doctors who counseled him before his treatment told him they didn't know what his voice was going to sound like afterward.

"I exclaimed, 'What?!'" recalled Olmos, who noted that the cancer he suffered from was "a very strong disease" and doctors had to "shoot" his vocal cords with radiation.

"We're shooting at your vocal cords, we're shooting at your throat, where you eat, where you swallow, where you talk, breathe, everything happens here," he said.

Olmos said that "many" of his friends died of the same disease and it cost him to lose 25 kilos of weight and all his muscle tone, because, not being able to swallow, he had to feed by probes.

The last four months have been spent regaining his strength and he is now in good shape thanks to swimming, weight-bearing and rowing.

"It was a changing experience, it made me understand how wonderful life is," said Olmos, who has a lump in his throat where his lymph nodes were burned by radiation.

Olmos who is one of the protagonists of Mayans M.C., a series that narrates the conflicts of immigration and Latino gangs like no other television fiction and has four seasons on FX.

She was also part of the cast of Selena, the 1997 film that 25 years ago recreated the beginnings and the brilliant rise in music of the queen of Tex-Mex, Selena Quintanilla, in which she played her father, Abel Quintanilla.

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