Home Alone actor undergoes cancer surgery after Steve Carell donates $10,000 to GoFundMe

Home Alone actor Ken Hudson Campbell has undergone surgery to successfully remove a tumor that spread to his mouth and jaw. 

The actor, who played Santa in the Macauley Culkin movie, had set up a GoFundMe to raise $100,000 after he lost his SAG-AFTRA health insurance, and the likes of The Office star Steve Carell helped donate. 

Ken’s daughter has revealed that things went well during the operation, and her father is now in recovery, telling TMZ that “family was able to visit him later that night once he was out of the OR” but that he “will remain in ICU for another two to three days, before he’s transferred to regular inpatient hospital care for about another week”. 

Donations have so far reached $98,000 for Ken, with Steve donating $10,000, $5,000 coming in from The Big Bang Theory creator Bill Prady and $1000 donations from Breaking Bad actor Bob Odenkirk, and  Daniel Castellaneta, who voices Homer Simpson on The Simpsons.

Steve and Ken became friends when they both performed as youngsters at Second City Chicago. 

The GoFundMe revealed that Ken was diagnosed on October 27, 2023 with a tumor that “had elusively grown on the bottom of his mouth and it began encroaching on his teeth”. 

His surgery was due to be a ten-hour long operation, “during which a large part of his jawbone will be removed, along with his lymph nodes, and part of his leg bone”. 

“Surgeons plan to reconstruct a new jaw for Ken from this leg bone, install it, and treat him with radiation. He will have a 6-month recovery period & Chemo may be needed afterwards as well,” it continued. 

Ken has also appeared as “the guy Bill Murray kisses in Groundhog Day,” and in “Armageddon, where his character loses his life saving the world from a giant asteroid,” as described by his family. 

Ken lost his health insurance at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, and his family went on to share the details of his recovery process, revealing that after the surgery he would be “looking at a week in the hospital, dealing with a feeding tube, skin grafts, and a Tracheotomy, and we are looking at further recovery possibilities like nursing homes”. 

“Even though physical therapy and speech therapy are covered, we  are anticipating huge out-of-pocket costs for caregivers/skilled nursing, insurance premiums, medical equipment, transportation, dental implants, dentures  and who knows what else. Our entire immediate family, Kathleen, Richard, and Michaela, are planning on taking care of him as much as we can during this long journey,”  they added, concluding: “Every prayer, positive thought, dollar, or gesture of support means the world to our family.”

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