Alan Alda says his face blindness made him not recognize his daughter: 'I don't think she was too happy'
Good one, dad.
Emmy and Golden Globe-winning actor Alan Alda is opening up about the time he didn't recognize his own daughter due to a condition he'd later come to find out was prosopagnosia, or face blindness.
In all fairness, the incident occurred on the set of Alda's film The Four Seasons, after he had had his daughter, Beatrice, dye her hair a completely different color for her role in the comedy. "I saw this person with horn-rimmed glasses and blonde hair staring at me, and it was starting to get distracting," Alda recalled to PEOPLE. "I said to the assistant director, 'Don't let these strangers come on the set.' He said, 'That's your daughter!' I don't think she was too happy about that, because neither of us knew that there was such a thing as face blindness [at the time]."
Alda said to this day it's "very hard" for him to recognize people due to the condition. "When somebody comes up to me, as if they know me, I often don't know if they know me from seeing me on the screen or if I actually know them," he told the outlet. "I could have dinner with somebody, spend two hours with somebody next to me, and the next day not know who they are."
Alda, 89, has been open about his health struggles in recent years. In 2018, he revealed he had been diagnosed with Parkinson's disease in 2015.
At the time, he told CBS This Morning he decided to reveal his diagnosis after noticing his "thumb twitch" during some recent TV appearances to promote his podcast, Clear+Vivid with Alan Alda. "I thought, it's probably only a matter of time before somebody does a story about this from a sad point of view, but that's not where I am," he said.
Speaking with PEOPLE more recently, Alda gave an update on his condition, telling the outlet, 'I don't have dexterity with my fingers the way I used to, so sometimes [my wife, Arlene] has to tear a package open for me,' he said. 'She's so good-natured about it. I'm always saying, 'Thank you.'"
He also admitted that while managing his Parkinson's has gone from "a part-time job to almost a full-time job" over the past 10 years, he's still able to keep a positive outlook. "It keeps me always looking for the funny side," he said.
Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
41 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Joshua Jackson Says Daughter Juno, 5, Had a Few Key Suggestions for Rebuilding Their House After It Burned in L.A. Fires
Joshua Jackson's daughter had some ideas about what to add to their house when they rebuild it The actor's childhood home, in which he lived with his daughter Juno, 5, burned down in the Los Angeles fires Jackson shares his daughter with ex-wife Jodie Turner-SmithJoshua Jackson's daughter had some suggestions for rebuilding their home after it burned down during the Los Angeles fires. The actor, 46, appeared on Today on Tuesday, May 27, and spoke about how he lost his childhood home during the fires in Los Angeles earlier this year. Jackson said that it was "not easy" and that the first six weeks were a "scramble," but noted that his daughter Juno, 5, was particularly resilient in the face of the disaster. "It just so happened that the day of a fire was a transfer day, so I drop her off at school, her mom picks her up, which was a blessing because it meant I had six days to kind of get it together, figure out a place for us to live, get the house restocked, get our feet on the ground," Jackson shared. "But it also meant that for six days, she didn't know her house burnt down." Never miss a story — sign up for to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer, from celebrity news to compelling human interest stories. "So when she comes back, I sit her down and tell her, 'Honey, I've got some bad news. The house burned down.' She starts to cry, which is good, right? She's processing," he continues. The proud dad says his daughter began asking if specific things were okay after the fires, to which Jackson had to answer that they had all burned down as well. "I say, 'This is not a grown-up thing. You can ask me any question you want about this and I will tell you whatever you want to know.' And she said, 'I would like to see some pictures.' So I go, 'Okay,' and I show her some pictures of the house," says Jackson. "She looks at it and she goes, 'Daddy, when we build the new house, we should build it with water around it because water doesn't burn.'" "I go, 'Okay,' and then she says, 'And you know what, we should build it with dirt around it because dirt doesn't burn.' I said, 'Honey, these are great ideas. I'm going to write these down and we're gonna write out a list.'" The father-daughter duo ended up spending an hour going through it and creating a list, which became "turrets and rainbows and unicorns." "This is the kind of thing to watch her process, this is loss, and she still bring it up, 'I miss my house,' and we've gone up there a bunch to try to keep a connection with the land and help her through it, but I'm astonished by her resiliency and her ability to process," says Jackson. Jackson shares his daughter with ex-wife Jodie Turner-Smith . The actor opened up about his divorce from Turner-Smith on an April episode of Jesse Tyler Ferguson's Dinner's on Me podcast and shared that he will always put his daughter first, despite all of life's outside factors. "If I ever did anything to estrange my daughter from myself, I would be in duress," he said. "I actually can't conceive of it because I don't even wanna think of the pain that that would be." "Regardless of how messy the divorce is, beautiful the divorce is, easy [or] hard the co-parenting is ... I think this generation of dads is understanding, like 'I need to be here. It's gonna be hard, but this is important, and I've got to do this,' " continued Jackson. "It's my job – shared with my ex-wife – to do everything that we can to nurture you, cultivate you and give you all the tools that you need in life." Read the original article on People
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
2000s Actress Shares How She Approaches Shooting Sex Scenes at 53
It's all in a day's work for Amanda Peet. "Dude, I've been doing this for so long, I'm just like, 'Show me where to be. Show me who to kiss. Who do I have to make out with today?'" Peet recently told People. The actress, known for her roles in 'The Whole Nine Yards' and 'The Good Wife,' is starring in 'Your Friends & Neighbors' on Apple TV+ where she has steamy love scenes with Jon Hamm, who plays her estranged husband, and Mark Tallman, who her character has an affair with."I love my stuff with Jon," she said of her scenes with Hamm. "He's a gentleman, and he's a really good leader on the set. He's not a snob, and I appreciate that." Peet also joked that she's so used to having a love scene on camera that she automatically assumes she has one just by seeing the show's intimacy coordinator. 'She's like, 'No, dear. It's somebody else,'" she a sex scene may be easy Peet these days, the actress recently said on 'Watch What Happens Live With Andy Cohen,' that appearing on 'Seinfeld' in 1997, where she made out with Jerry Seinfeld, was "rough." "I had a lot of stage fright. I was really scared," Peet said, rating her performance a "5" as part of a game on the Bravo show. The season finale episode of 'Your Friends & Neighbors' airs this Friday. 🎬SIGN UP for Parade's Daily newsletter to get the latest pop culture news & celebrity interviews delivered right to your inbox🎬 2000s Actress Shares How She Approaches Shooting Sex Scenes at 53 first appeared on Parade on May 27, 2025
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
Meet the cast of 'Destination X' reality show hosted by Jeffrey Dean Morgan
Having a Euro summer isn't for everyone between the cost and getting the time off of work. Thankfully, there's a new reality competition series to satisfy that travel bug without having to leave the comfort of your own couch! NBC's Destination X, hosted by The Walking Dead and Supernatural star Jeffrey Dean Morgan, combines a trip across Europe with a guessing game, and features some reality show alums from The Challenge, The Traitors, and Love Island playing against normal civilians. Competitors travel through different countries living in a blacked-out bus, and their goal is to figure out where they've been dropped off at each destination by using tourist attractions, hidden clues disguised as artifacts, and challenges. At the end of each episode, they'll enter the Map Room to make their guess on where they think they are, and the furthest from the location is sent home. Ultimately, the last player standing meets the host and wins $250,000. According to the release, contestants will need to rely on "their knowledge of pop culture, history, geography, and observational skills to win clues to their current location and earn an all-important advantage." Plus, players will need to learn to "ignore intentional misdirects" from their opponents to figure out where they are. We love sabotage! Another twist includes The Traitors/The Bachelor alum Peter "Pilot Pete" Weber and Love Island alum JaNa Craig hopping on the adventure bus to "change the trajectory of the game" somehow. And The Challenge and Big Brother alum Josh Martinez is also among the cast, starting off the season as the only reality TV veteran before Weber and Craig join the show. "I was expecting for there to be more TV vets, and I was very shocked when I took off my goggles and I was like, 'I don't recognize anyone!'" Martinez previously told Entertainment Weekly. "Once I saw the bus pull up and Jeffrey said that's where we were going to be living, I was instantly excited. And then once we hit the road for about six to eight hours, it had set in that this was going to be my reality for the next few weeks or months, and I went absolutely crazy... The living conditions on the bus was extremely hard for me." Below, check out the full list of cast members competing for the ultimate X premieres Tuesday at 10 p.m. ET/PT on NBC, with episodes streaming the next day on Peacock. Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly
