Ben Stiller was "scared" when he was diagnosed with prostate cancer two years ago.

Ben Stiller

Ben Stiller

The 50-year-old actor has admitted he was taken aback when doctors detected the life-threatening disease because it came "out of the blue", and Ben has revealed he "stopped everything" and felt he couldn't agree to star in any movies because he didn't know what would happen in the future.

Speaking on SiriusXM's 'The Howard Stern Show' on Tuesday (04.10.16), he said: "It came out of the blue for me. I had no idea.

"At first, I didn't know what was going to happen. I was scared. It just stopped everything in your life because you can't plan for a movie because you don't know what's going to happen."

However, the 'Zoolander' actor has now decided to speak about his battle because he wants to bring awareness to the prostate-specificen antigen test (PSA), which he believes "saved" him.

Ben - who has 14-year-old daughter Ella and 11-year-old son Quinn with his wife Christine Taylor - explained: "I wanted to talk about it because of the [PSA] test ... I feel like the test saved my life.

"It's the second most deadly cancer, but it's about one of the most curable.

Meanwhile, the dark-haired funny man has since thrown him back into working and will star in a new comedy movie called 'Brad's Status', which was written by 'School of Rock' creator Mike White and will be produced by Brad Pitt's production company Plan B Entertainment.

His forthcoming role will see him in the lead role of Brad, who is envious of his old school friends' careers, despite having a good career and a happy family.

Sidney Kimmel Entertainment are distributing the movie and SKE President John Penotti and production president Carla Hacken are confident the team will make the project a success.

They said in a joint statement: "Ben Stiller has that rare ability to balance his amazing comedic skills with an emotional depth that brings us all closer to his characters. He's so perfect for this great part."

Stiller recently completed production on 'The Meyerowitz Stories' with Dustin Hoffman and Adam Sandler.