Irish actor Bryan Murray has revealed that he is battling Alzheimer’s disease.
Speaking to RTE Guide, Bryan Murray said that he hopes going public with the diagnosis will “help others”. The 73-year-old, who plays Bob in Fair City, told the magazine that it is “not the end of the world”.
“I wish I didn’t have it, but I do have it, and I’m still here. I have it and I am working with it.”
Murray, whose first foray into soap was as abusive Trevor Jordache in Channel 4’s Brookside in the mid-90s, was diagnosed with the disease three years ago. The actor was joined for the interview by his real-life and on-screen partner Úna Crawford O’Brien, who plays Fair City’s Renee, as they recalled the events leading up to his diagnosis.
“As a younger actor, I would get a script, it would be four pages and within 15 minutes I would know the lines. As I got older, I couldn’t do that any longer.”
O’Brien added:
“We were both touring with a play, Halcyon Days by Deirdre Kinahan and I noticed Bryan’s lines were difficult for him. He’d get irate if I were to say anything, so later, on holidays, I asked if he’d get his memory checked. He had the tests and got the diagnosis.”
Murray noted that he feared the diagnosis would lead to the end of his role in the Irish soap, however he said that the producers immediately assured him that he had their full support.
“The producer of Fair City, Brigie de Courcy, said they’d do anything they could to support me. When it first started, my character would be looking at a laptop, reading a newspaper, or I might have had a clipboard, but it would be the script in front of me. So, even if your memory is gone down the pan, your ways of coping with it are still intact.”
He added of going public about the disease:
“I really wanted to let it be known this was my situation and that for anyone who’s been recently diagnosed, there is an answer to it. It’s not the end of the world. It’s the changing of your world, but not the end.”
Murray will perform in a brand-new play that Deirdre Kinahan has written especially for him at Dublin’s Peacock Theatre in April of next year.
O’Brien noted of the new project:
“It’s about a fictional elderly actor, Seán who has written stories and letters to himself before he had Alzheimer’s. Bryan will read the letters, which is ideal, and Seán as a young man will be played by another actor.”
