The actor publicly announced his battle with the degenerative condition (Picture: Getty Images)
Danny Glover has revealed that he has been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease.
The actor, 79, who is best known for his roles in Lethal Weapon and The Color Purple, publicly announced his battle with the condition during an appearance on The Today Show on Wednesday.
Glover revealed he had been diagnosed ‘not long’ after he received an honorary Oscar in 2022.
Speaking on the show, he explained: ‘I can live with it in a sense. I’m sure as it advances, different things will be different and changing.’
Glover’s daughter Mandisa, who appeared in a pre-taped segment, also added that it is ‘really important’ for her father to speak on his own terms.
She said: ‘And the time is now. What better time but now for him to speak for himself? It’s important because people ask questions sometimes, and I don’t want to be a dishonest person and say, ‘Oh, yeah, everything is all right. It’s all great”.’
Glover revealed he had been diagnosed ‘not long’ after receiving an honorary Oscar (Picture: Getty Images)
The actor has starred in major films from the Lethal Weapon franchise to The Color Purple (Picture: EPA)
Glover also spoke about how he is ‘still not accepting in my mind all parts of it’.
Talking to People, he explained: ‘There are the moments that you keep remembering that validate the fact that you can remember stuff. And there are moments I’ll never forget.’
Alzheimer’s disease is a progressive, degenerative disease of the brain where the build-up of abnormal proteins causes nerve cells to die.
This process causes short-term memory loss, disorientation and behavioural changes before progressing into severe memory loss before eventually losing the ability to walk.
The actor said that coming to terms with his diagnosis in 2023 saw him acknowledge ‘that it’s happening to you and at the same time that there are millions of people suffering from it’.
Glover was one of the defining movie stars of the 1980s and 1990s (Picture: AP)
One of Glover’s best known roles came in Leathal Weapon alongside Mel Gibson (Picture: Snap/Shutterstock)
Born in San Francisco in 1946, he rose to international fame as Detective Roger Murtaugh in the Lethal Weapon film series alongside Mel Gibson.
Becoming one of the defining screen stars of the late 1980s and 1990s, he is also known for Places in the Heart and Witness and Angels in the Outfield, earning four Emmy Award nominations over the course of his career.
Away from the screen, Glover has long been recognised for his humanitarian and political activism.
In 2022, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences honoured him with the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award, recognising his decades of charitable work and social advocacy.
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