Patch Adams (1998)
In this saccharine drama, Robin Williams stars as real-life doctor Hunter "Patch" Adams, a formerly suicidal medic turned inspirational healer. A believer in the palliative power of laughter, the doc cheers up a ward of bald chemotherapy patients by dressing as a clown. In turn, the children boldly don red sponge noses when Patch must defend this practice in court, when he is almost expelled from medical school.
After Susan Sarandon's mother of two Jackie Harrison is diagnosed with cancer, she realizes she must overcome her bitterness toward her ex-husband's new girlfriend (Julia Roberts) and teach her how to become a proper parent to her two children. Though Jackie's chemotherapy treatments are portrayed as unusually benign, she still manages to capture the deep sadness she feels in feeling her family behind.
Blow Dry (2001)
In an ironic stroke, hairdresser and ex-hair model Shelly (Natasha Richardson) is forced to style her own wigs to cover up her hair loss after her lung cancer returns for a third (and presumably, last) time. Luckily, she's not the only coiffeur in the family. After ten years of not speaking to her ex-husband (Alan Rickman), she lulls him into picking up his competition shears again. Together with their son and her new female lover, Shelly wins the British Hairdressing Championship with her family.
Wit (2001)
In director Mike Nichols' unflinching adaptation of Margaret Edson's Pulitzer Prize-winning play, Emma Thompson plays Professor Vivian Bearing, a John Donne scholar diagnosed with stage four metastatic ovarian cancer. Ordered to undergo eight rounds of experimental chemo at "full dosage," she is forced to rely on her wry humor and bald-head covering baseball cap to get her through the worst.
Pieces Of April (2003)
Many chemo patients opt for wigs to cover their inevitable hair loss, and no character captures the black humor of maintaining the hated hairpiece more than Patricia Clarkson as leukemia patient Joy in this comi-tragic film. While driving to a Thanksgiving dinner cooked by her estranged daughter (Katie Holmes), Joy's nausea forces her family to stop at a restroom every few miles, and in one, the wig flops into the toilet.
Based on Geralyn Lucas' life story, this surprisingly touching Lifetime movie features "Scrubs'" Sarah Chalke as a 28-year-old editor whose career as a TV news journalist is finally taking off when she's diagnosed with breast cancer. To combat her fear of chemo, she always applies a bright coat of red lipstick before going to her treatment, explaining that only confident women wear red lipstick.
