Sandra Bullock‘s longtime partner Bryan Randall died on Saturday after a three-year battle with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). He was 57.
In a statement, Randall’s family announced his death over the weekend.
“It is with great sadness that we share that on Aug. 5, Bryan Randall passed away peacefully after a three-year battle with ALS,” the statement reads. “Bryan chose early to keep his journey with ALS private and those of us who cared for him did our best to honor his request.”
ALS, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, is a rare neurodegenerative disease that progressively paralyzes a person as a result of nerve cell death in the brain and spinal cord. ALS patients will lose the ability to walk, talk, eat, swallow and eventually breathe. There is no cure.
“We are immensely grateful to the tireless doctors who navigated the landscape of this illness with us and to the astounding nurses who became our roommates, often sacrificing their own families to be with ours,” the statement continues. “At this time we ask for privacy to grieve and to come to terms with the impossibility of saying goodbye to Bryan.”
The statement was signed, “His Loving Family.”
Bullock’s sister, Gesine Bullock-Brado, praised the Oscar-winning actor for being a caretaker to Randall.
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“ALS is a cruel disease but there is some comfort in knowing he had the best of caretakers in my amazing sister and the band of nurses she assembled who helped her look after him in their home,” she wrote.
In lieu of flowers, Randall’s family has asked for donations to be made to the ALS Association and the Massachusetts General Hospital.
The Bird Box actor met Randall when he was hired to photograph Bullock’s son Louis’ birthday in 2015. The couple was co-parenting their three children — Bullock’s adopted son and daughter, and Randall’s daughter from a previous relationship.
In a 2021 interview on Red Table Talk, hosted by Jada Pinkett Smith, her daughter Willow and mother Adrienne Banfield-Norris, Bullock, 59, said she did not need to be legally married to Randall in order to be committed.
“I don’t want to say do it like I do it, but I don’t need a paper to be a devoted partner and devoted mother,” she said.
Though Bullock did not disclose it at the time, Randall would have already been diagnosed with ALS.
“I don’t need to be told to be ever-present in the hardest of times. I don’t need to be told to weather a storm with a good man,” she continued.
There are more than 200,000 people diagnosed with ALS internationally, according to the ALS Society of Canada, and about 2,500-3,000 Canadians live with the disease. Roughly 1,000 Canadians are diagnosed annually — the same number of Canadians who die from the disease every year.
ALS is not contagious. Most patients will die between two and five years after diagnosis.
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