Stanford PD Community Blog

Excerpt: “The 83-year-old actor, who announced last year that he is living with Parkinson’s disease, plays a …lawyer. The film … doesn’t mask Mr. Alda’s shaking hands but keeps them in the frame, a visual contrast to the slick moves of the sharklike lawyers elsewhere in the movie. The actor … learned he had the nervous-system disorder in 2015 after his wife Arlene Alda told him he wasn’t swinging his arms when he walked. He began acting out his dreams in his sleep too, another early sign of Parkinson’s. Soon after, Mr. Alda got the diagnosis. To cope, he wedged a pillow between himself and his wife of 62 years to make it harder to reach her in those sleeping episodes and began an exercise regimen to lessen his symptoms that included boxing and marching to Sousa music.”