Her brother Mike was told he had lymphoma, and she had to take care of him. Then, just weeks before his death in April 1995, Sweeney found out she had cervical cancer. Why, turn it into an act, of course. The result is a surreal mix of medical drama and family comedy. In even tones of ironic amusement, Sweeney talks about getting her brother through spinal-tap chemotherapy and convincing her mother that people who call noodles pasta are not just showing off.
Black humor prevails even in the darkest hours.
Just three days after Mike's death, Julia has to undergo a hysterectomy, and her doctor suggests that she might want to harvest a few eggs from her still-functioning ovaries, which could later be fertilized by a sperm donor and carried to term by a surrogate mother. The two had the same dressing room at SNL and the same doctor at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, and oddly, just before Sweeney got her cancer diagnosis, she had agreed to appear at a benefit for the Gilda Radner Foundation to fight ovarian cancer. And I don't think that's appropriate. Sweeney took her time getting into show business, spending five years in the accounting department at Columbia Pictures before joining the Groundlings, a Los Angeles improvisational troupe. From there she was plucked for the cast of Saturday Night Live in 1990.