* Michael Cuccione; Actor, 16, Played Ailing Youths

Michael Cuccione, 16, youngest of the five-member spoof boy band “2gether.” The teenager played Jason “Q.T.” McKnight on the MTV show “2gether,” which poked fun at the boy band craze. His character had a fictional illness, “biliary thrombosis,” but Cuccione really had suffered from Hodgkin’s disease as a child and underwent five months of chemotherapy. Cuccione’s uncle, also named Michael Cuccione, told MTV News that the cancer had not returned in five years, but past treatments had left his nephew unable to move air properly through his lungs. A problem with his diaphragm developed and he was forced to tape episodes of “2gether” while carrying a portable oxygen machine. The singer-actor set up a cancer research foundation, wrote a book with his grandmother and appeared on “Baywatch” as a cancer victim. The family requests that donations be made to the Michael Cuccione Foundation for Cancer Research, P.O. Box 31081, No. 8-2929 St. John’s Street, Port Moody, B.C. V3H 4T4. On Saturday in Vancouver, British Columbia, of complications from Hodgkin’s disease.