Four Seasons creator Alan Alda gives health update after Parkinson’s disease diagnosis – UK Times

Alan Alda has offered an update on his life with Parkinson’s disease.

The 89-year-old actor and writer, best known for playing Captain Benjamin “Hawkeye” Pierce in the long-running sitcom MASH, was diagnosed with the disorder in 2015.

He recently returned to the screen to make a cameo appearance in Netflix’s The Four Seasons, Tina Fey’s adaptation of the 1981 film Alda wrote, directed, and starred in.

Speaking to People, Alda joked that he’s recently been “making progress… I didn’t say in which direction.”

He also has a condition called prosopagnosia, known as face blindness, which makes it hard for him to recognize people.

Alda told the publication that dealing with his health issues presents a series of puzzles, adding: “Almost every day I’m finding a new way to do something.

“It’s a little like a game. I’ve found whatever the little problem is, if I keep at it, I can eventually solve it, and then I feel like a million bucks. It’s a way to have a good time under poor circumstances.”

He went on to say that managing his Parkinson’s has “gone from a part-time job to almost a full-time job keeping track of all these little solutions. But it keeps me always looking for the funny side.”

Netflix’s version of The Four Seasons has been well received. In a four-star review, The Independent’s television critic Nick Hilton wrote: “Alan Alda’s 1981 movie, from which this series is loosely adapted, was a surprise hit, the ninth-highest-grossing film in the US that year (last year, that slot was held by Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire, if that tells you anything about how cinema has changed).

“Fey and co-writers Lang Fisher and Tracey Wigfield take Alda’s gentle, humane portrait of middle age as a jumping-off point and inject it with Netflix’s signature oversaturated aesthetic and a dollop of broader comedy.

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“A surprise vow renewal, a sea urchin foot injury, an out-of-the-blue tragedy: new plot points add jeopardy to the ambling stakes of the 1980s. Yet Fey and co retain a love of the mundane bickering and piercing side-eye of couples and friends. ‘I left Anne,’ Nick laments. ‘Now you think I’m a piece of s***.’”

Alda told People he was delighted by the success of the new series, which was recently renewed for a second season.

“I’m so happy for Tina,” said Alda. “The movie meant a lot to me, and people are reacting to her work very much as they did to mine.”