Alan Alda is opening up about the realities of living with Parkinson’s disease as a working actor, especially one now in his 90s.
The star, who celebrated his milestone 90th birthday in January, was diagnosed with the debilitating condition in 2015. He went public with his diagnosis in 2018, although has continued to act, most recently appearing in The Four Seasons.
The actor recently appeared at the 92NY in New York City for an event titled “Alan Alda, Joy Behar and Roger Rosenblatt in Conversation: More Rules for Aging,” where he candidly opened up about aging in the public eye, being treated like a senior citizen, and living with Parkinson’s, per People.
At one point, Roger asked the M*A*S*H star how he wanted to look back and “think about yourself, not in an egotistical way, in an artistic way, but just in a kind of general biographical way.”
Alan responded: “I mean, what I’m more interested in reality than wishing you weren’t… So I have Parkinson’s. For me, it’s a game of solving puzzles. I mean, a really interesting puzzle is how do you get your pants on without falling on the floor?”
However, the sitcom legend is taking each day as it comes and isn’t letting his disease get his spirit down. He noted also that him and his wife Arlene, to whom he has been married since 1957, talk often about death to take the sting out of it.
“One time, we picked Carl Reiner up to take him someplace to dinner and as we were driving, Carl’s wife had just died and we told him how Arlene and I talk all the time about what we’d do [about] who died first,” he recalled.
© Getty Images“If I died first, what would her life be like? If she died first, what would I do? And just around then, I drove over to the divider of Sunset Boulevard. A little bit of sidewalk,” he continued. “Just bounced away. And Carl said, ‘You know the way you drive, you don’t have to worry.'”
Looking back on his 90th birthday celebration on January 28, Alan quipped: “I was just thinking of the day, the actual day that I was 90 this year.”
© Getty Images“We went out to dinner and the waiter came by at the end of the meal with a cupcake with a candle in it and led the restaurant in singing, saying, ‘Happy birthday, older gentleman.’ Then I blew out the candle and they said, ‘You did it yourself. I didn’t help you.’ They kind of let you know.”
“You get a hint that you’re older when you’re like me and you discover that you’ve got three daughters and they’re all on Medicare,” he continued, referring to his daughters Eve, 67, Elizabeth, 65, and Beatrice, 64.
“But people tell you, the world tells you you’re older,” the Four Seasons star shared. “I don’t count how old I am by the number of years I’ve lived. I count by how many times a day somebody says, ‘Can I help you?'”
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