Rose and Jack to the rescue! Former Titanic costars and friends Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio teamed up to help save the life of a 28-year-old mother named Gemma Nuttall who is battling cancer.
Nuttall, who was diagnosed with ovarian cancer when she was pregnant, refused potentially life-saving treatment because she would have been forced to terminate her pregnancy. After her daughter was born, she was told she had six months to live.
The Oscar-winning actress, 42, surprised Nuttall, whose daughter Penelope is now 3 years old, by calling in during her appearance on British talk show This Morning on Monday, February 5.
“I lost my own mother last year in May to ovarian cancer and we as a family were given a very poor prognosis for my mum, after a four-year battle, a really unbelievable fight, we decided to look elsewhere and we also stumbled across those places in Germany,” Winslet said. “Simultaneously I came across a petition on change.org.uk, which was Gemma, or someone on behalf of Gemma, campaigning to have immunotherapy made available on the NHS and my heart sunk as at that point I thought. This poor young woman is probably years away from her being able to access that kind of treatment on the national health service.’”
Winslet went to on to explain that she contacted Nuttall’s mother, Helen, to start raising funds so her daughter could start a six-session course of immunotherapy, a treatment that can cost up to $98,000 a visit.
