Joe Manganiello’s Opens Up About His Secret Health Crisis in New Memoir: ‘Brutally Difficult’

Joe Manganiello is opening up about the brutal health battle that nearly upended his life — a story at odds with the rugged, larger-than-life persona he’s built on screen for decades.

The True Blood and Magic Mike actor’s new memoir, Bloodlines, traces a seven-year medical odyssey that began with what he describes as “a cascade of autoimmune-related illnesses,” People reported Tuesday, June 23.

The illness attacked his skin, thyroid, eyes, lungs and digestive system, plunging him into seven years marked by “chronic pain, a life-saving organ amputation, existential crisis and a prolonged fight for survival that left doctors with few answers and no clear explanation,” per the book’s publisher Simon & Schuster.

When modern medicine came up short, Manganiello, 49, details how he turned to an unconventional path that included shamans, pagan rituals and ancient myths, ultimately tracing his own bloodline to uncover ancestors shaped by violence, displacement and chronic illness.

“It was the most brutally difficult time of my life, one I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy, but also my greatest adventure,” Manganiello said, according to People. “I hope that what I went through on this journey can give readers hope that answers and healing may lie for them on the other side of whatever they are fighting through. The process of writing this book gave me the gift of perspective that helped me to see that my suffering was a cocoon from which I would emerge forever changed.”

Simon & Schuster describes Bloodlines as “both a page-turning, heart-pounding story for the ages and an essential meditation on inheritance, loss, and the work of living with what remains.”

Throughout the memoir, the publisher notes, Manganiello writes with “candor and hard-won clarity” as he grapples with questions of faith, masculinity and the identity he had to rebuild.

While the book explores the losses, questions and personal rebuilding that have shaped his life, Manganiello has also found happiness in his personal life.

Since his 2024 divorce from actress Sofía Vergara, he has moved on with actress and TV host Caitlin O’Connor. The couple began dating in 2023, made their red carpet debut later that year and announced their engagement in October 2025.