He recently made a cameo in Tina Fey’s Netflix series adaptation of his 1981 film The Four Seasons, a project close to his heart.
“I’m so happy for Tina,” Alda shared. “The movie meant a lot to me, and people are reacting to her work very much as they did to mine.”
His tremors were visible on-screen, but Alda made no effort to hide them—refusing to let Parkinson’s overshadow his passion for storytelling.
Throughout this journey, Alda has leaned on his greatest support system: his wife Arlene, to whom he’s been married for 68 years.
Their love story began in 1956 at a party in New York City, where they famously bonded over a dropped rum cake they ate off the floor.
“I knew she was the one when we ate the cake off the floor,” he recalled.
“There’s something about flirting over food, and that she laughed at my jokes meant a lot. We still laugh at each other’s jokes a lot—and she’s getting funnier every day.”
