Michael Douglas' headline-hitting throat cancer was a lie. The Academy Award-winning actor wasn't diagnosed with the disease, but had successfully battle another equally ominous cancer, he admitted to fellow Hollywood superstar Samuel L. Jackson.

In an interview with the "Avengers" star on the UK talk show "This Morning," Douglas came clean about having cancer in 2010. Although he was really diagnosed with the potentially deadly disease, it wasn't his throat that was affected, but his tongue.

His doctor had found a walnut-size tumour at the base of his tongue right before he was to go on a promotional tour for his film "Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps." But instead of just telling people that he had tongue cancer, his doctor advised him to lie about it.

"The surgeon said, 'Let's just say it's throat cancer,'" Douglas recalled in the interview. "I said, 'Okay, you don't want to say it's tongue cancer?' I said, 'What's that?'

"And he said, 'Well, if you really want to know why, if we do have to have surgery, it's not going to be pretty. You'll lose part of your jaw and your tongue and all of that stuff.' So I said, 'Okay, sure.'"

To avoid discussing his surgery and possible facial disfigurement during press tours, Douglas agreed that he should just tell everyone it's throat cancer.

He underwent chemotherapy and radiation treatment to combat the disease, and was declared tumour-free in January 2011.

However, in May 2013, he hit headlines again after he claimed that his throat cancer was caused by the HPV virus contracted through oral sex. And since he's married to Catherine Zeta-Jones, it was speculated that the A-list actress gave him the virus.

That had caused Douglas' rep to release a statement, denying that he got cancer from oral sex.

"Michael Douglas did not say cunnilingus was the cause of his cancer. It was discussed that oral sex is a suspected cause of certain oral cancers as doctors in the article point out, but he did not say it was the specific cause of his personal cancer," the rep told USA Today in May.

Douglas is currently separated from Zeta-Jones, with whom he has two children.