Michelle Monaghan Discusses Skin Cancer Advocacy and Sun Safety

Michelle Monaghan is known for high-stakes roles in the "Mission: Impossible" franchise and "True Detective," but her most personal mission began with a single mole on her leg. Growing up in rural Iowa, the Golden Globe-nominated actress admitted sun protection was never a priority until her Australian husband insisted she visit a dermatologist. That visit led to a life-changing melanoma diagnosis and a subsequent excisional surgery.

Now, Monaghan is using her platform to transform her survival story into advocacy. She recently released "A Kids Book About Sun Safety," a guide designed to empower children ages 5 to 9 with skin intelligence rather than fear.

In this interview with CURE Today, Monaghan discusses the cumulative nature of sun damage, the importance of biannual skin checks and how she has made applying SPF as routine as brushing teeth for her family.

You've credited your husband for being the one who insisted you get a suspicious mole on your leg checked, which ultimately led to your diagnosis. How do you believe loved ones can better support one another in being proactive about skin checks, especially when one person might be hesitant or unaware of the risk?

You bring up a very fair point — I often credit him with saving my life. I grew up in rural Iowa. I had very little awareness about sun safety, or about skin cancer. My folks, unfortunately, didn't have a lot of awareness either. However, my husband grew up in a country, in Australia, where the culture and the education is very much centered around sun safety, there's a lot of education from a very young age through school, through simple advertising, this a much greater level of awareness. And so, I very much come from the place of once you become skin cancer literate and you start to have that understanding of the importance of sun safety, it's essential to pay that information forward, and that's essentially what I've done with my own experience; my husband paid that forward onto me, I’ll forever be indebted to him, and so as a result once I became aware of my own situation I of course wanted to share that information and that knowledge publicly and also certainly with friends and loved ones.

There used to be like that saying, “Friends don't let friends drive drunk.” Well, I'm like, “Friends don't let friends burn.” So I'm definitely the friend, or the family member, if we're at a barbecue, if we're at the beach, we're going for a long hike. I'm definitely the gal going, “Do we have sunscreen? Did everybody apply? Did everybody reapply?” And it is interesting to me, because we still live in a country where I think, considering the statistics as I try to use my awareness and my advocacy, I'm still surprised that there are so many people that are unaware of the dangers of being exposed to the sun.

It’s interesting how awareness and culture has evolved over time. I grew up in the ’80s, and sun safety and skincare wasn't really something we talked about back then.

That's right, exactly. And we're starting to see a shift now, which is great, and specifically with a younger generation, which is really important, because sunburns and sun damage are cumulative, and most sunburns happen before the age of 18, and so the risk of developing skin cancer as a result of that cumulative sun damage is greater, and so that's why I really try to center a lot of my conversations and my advocacy, obviously through parents, but also to children as well.

Your new book, “A Kids Book About Sun Safety,” tackles this serious topic for an audience aged 5 to 9. What was the biggest challenge in simplifying the science of skin cancer to make it empowering rather than scary for young readers?

That was absolutely my challenge, and I think that, being a mom to two young children, they were definitely my inspiration for writing this book. There was a real disconnect for me as a parent who had undergone a melanoma diagnosis, and then having children and saying, “Let's go outside and play, let's go have a swim in the ocean, let's go have a hike,” but then also trying to help them understand that even while we're going outside, we still need to be protected from the sun. And so, there was that disconnect of going, “Well, gosh, how do I inform and make the science accessible and digestible for children, and not making it fearful for them? And how do I keep it fun? How do we still have fun in the sun?”

And so, I really took the approach of looking at it from a scientific perspective, because kids love facts, and I thought if I started there, I could hook them with some cool little facts about the sun, about our body and our skin being the biggest organ that we have and why it's important to take care of it, and I wanted them to understand the power of the sun initially, so that they could then feel empowered to look after themselves while they're having fun in the sun. I use this term, being sun-savvy, and wanted to have it be a conversation starter for not just kids to read the book alone, but it's why I love this particular kids book series, “A Kids Book About,” because it's an opportunity to inform adults and children alike, and so they're learning something new together, and they can talk about questions, and so there's this shared awareness, which I think is really impactful.

You still visit a dermatologist twice a year and occasionally have precautionary mole removals. How do you maintain a positive outlook on survivorship while remaining vigilant about the possibility of relapse or recurrence?

I think, because I am so mindful, and I'm aware of my cancer history, and I know the best way to prevent another diagnosis is to be wearing SPF daily, or wearing protective clothing, but also visiting dermatologists annually — for someone who's had my diagnosis you can recommend going twice a year — is the most vigilant thing I can do, and so that actually gives me peace of mind, knowing that I'm doing everything and I'm checking that box each and every year is really important.

I'm most certainly more careful, and I practice sun safety on a daily basis now, and I actually have very little fear of reoccurrence, because I know how protected I am, and it's something that I do take very seriously. I would say that I'm probably having more fear around my children, because certainly children's skin is much more sensitive than adult skin, and, as I mentioned, sun damage is cumulative, and also children are hard to wrangle and hard to get that SPF on, and they have minds of their own.

That's my main area of focus, specifically knowing that I have had skin cancer, and perhaps it's genetic. My husband has also had skin cancer, he has not had melanoma, he's had basal cell, and so it's something that is just really important in our home, we just try to continue the conversation, and we really say that applying sunscreen is as important as brushing your teeth. We really make it a part of our daily routine, and it's something that we do before we walk out of the house every single day. It's like, “Did you brush your teeth? Did you make your bed? Did you put on sunscreen?” and we really normalize it.

I don't want to have fear around taking care of myself, because if I'm taking care of myself, it should alleviate the fear, and so one of the things that I do is I just try to lead by example, and I think that kids are very adaptable that way. We saw that during COVID, when we were saying, “Wash your hands and apply sanitizer.” Kids did that, everybody looked after themselves. I don't think we should underestimate that kids are very open to taking care of their skin, and so I just put it on, they see me put it on, it's in different parts of the house, and that's my main area of focus.