Danny Glover is speaking out after being diagnosed in 2023 with Alzheimer’s disease.
The beloved actor, who will turn 80 on July 22, revealed to PEOPLE magazine that he has been battling the irreversible brain disorder for about three years.
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“I’m still not accepting in my mind all parts of it,” he said. “There are moments that you keep remembering that validate the fact that you can remember stuff. And there are moments I’ll never forget.”
“I think he’s aware sometimes and then sometimes not,” his daughter Mandisa, 50, said. She said she started noticing a difference in her dad’s behavior in 2022.
“The history of my dad is that he remembers every single thing back to 1970, what corner he was standing on, who he spoke to, what they spoke about, what color they were wearing, everything,” she said. But that started to change. “He’d tell you so much about his parents — and I’ve heard those stories over and over — and there would be pieces of the story missing. I said, ‘I wonder what’s going on.’”
Glover said reconciling with the diagnosis is “in some sense acknowledging that it’s happening to you and at the same time that there are millions of people suffering from it.” The Lethal Weapon star said he and his family came to terms with it together.
Mandisa said Glover is ready to reveal his diagnosis and share what it’s like to face the disease head-on. “I don’t feel like it’s the end of my life,” Glover said. “There’s work to do.”
The Color Purple actor’s younger brother Marty, who lives with him, said that “everybody thinks [Glover] is Mister,” referencing Glover’s famous portrayal of the abusive husband of Whoopi Goldberg’s character in The Color Purple, but that couldn’t be further from the truth.
Marty called Glover the “greatest guy I ever met in my life” and said that he “saved” him. “I’ve been to jails, institutions, used drugs. Growing up, we weren’t close until I started getting into trouble. And then he came and got me out and moved me down to Hollywood, and we’ve been inseparable ever since,” Marty said.
Seeing his brother battle Alzheimer’s hasn’t been easy on Marty, 67. “You see the deterioration, and you think, ‘Wow,’” he said. “Sometimes you get emotional about it. It’s tough, because you don’t want to see nobody go through this.”
Glover, who says his mind is at its clearest in the mornings, is maintaining a positive outlook. “I still have my daughter, I have friends. I want to just say, your life continues.”
