Owen Wilson Reveals His Father Has Alzheimer's Disease
Actor opens up about his father's battle with the disease.
— -- Owen Wilson is opening up for the first time about his father's battle with Alzheimer's disease.
"It’s one of those things where if somebody had said 10 years ago, when my dad and I were joking around, having a putting match, that this is the position your dad’s going to be in, where he basically needs 24-hour care, you’d think, ‘Gosh, I won’t be able to handle that. That’s just not possible,'" the 46-year-old actor told the Dallas Morning News.
"But it does happen. Such things just happen in life," said the actor, who grew up in Dallas, Texas, with his father Bob Wilson, a public television executive, his mother Laura Wilson, a photographer, and his two acting brothers, Luke and Andrew Wilson.
"You just have to do your best to deal with it," he added. "You’ve got no choice but to accept it. And then, you sort of still look for the things to be grateful for. He is at home, taken care of, and he has people around that love him."
Now 74, Bob Wilson took charge of Dallas' public television affiliate KERA in 1967. He hired Jim Lehrer from the Dallas Times Herald and put him in charge of public affairs programming, which led to the creation of the local news program, "Newsroom," the forerunner of "The News Hour With Jim Lehrer."
"For me and my brothers, there just wasn’t a bigger influence on us," the "Wedding Crashers" star told the Dallas paper. "Maybe it sounds trite or something, but I really believe that his spirit gets carried on through me, the way I like to joke around."
Wilson also feels closer than ever to his father after becoming a father himself to two boys, ages 4 and 1.
Being a dad helped him appreciate his role as a father who unwittingly transports his wife and two young daughters into a foreign country being toppled in a coup in his new film "No Escape."
"It’s about a father trying to protect his kids and doing everything he can," Wilson told the newspaper. "That was very relatable, something I could imagine. Obviously, we never had anything like that."
