Days of Our Lives star James Reynolds, 80, shares Parkinson's diagnosis and early symptoms

Niti Majethia Wed, November 11, 2026 at 2:17 PM UTC

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James Reynolds has been diagnosed with Parkinson's disease (Image: Getty)

Days of Our Lives star James Reynolds recently detailed his experience with Parkinson's disease. While speaking to Entertainment Tonight, Reynolds, 80, revealed how the disease has affected his personal day-to-day life, and how the show has incorporated the diagnosis into his character Abe Carver's storyline.

"Well, it kind of goes back to when I thought I was hiding it. The writers also wanted to incorporate because it was obvious. It was obvious. And we play life here," he said. Reynolds is the longest-running Black actor in a single series in TV history after completing 45 years on the popular drama.

"And there are many other characters who have gone through real-life issues that then are mirrored on the show. And this is an issue that it is going to be mirrored on the show and there's nothing any of us can really do about it," the actor added.

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The actor plays Abe Carver on Days of Our Lives (Image: Getty)

He continued, "But I feel like the value of Abe as a character who overcomes a lot, has tremendous amount of strength, deals with a lot of things with humor as well as understanding."

According to National Institute of Health, "Parkinson's disease (PD) is a disorder of the nervous system that affects movement and gets worse over time. It causes nerve cells in parts of the brain to weaken, become damaged, and die."

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Reynolds added that before he was vocal about his suffering, he would find himself jittery and then apologizing for it, and thought he was "hiding" something, when he actually wasn't.

"You're playing that game with yourself," he told Entertainment Tonight.

The show has incorporated his diagnosis in his character's storyline (Image: Getty)

Divulging the extent of his symptoms, Reynolds stated that he would experience tremors "that didn't wanna go away" along with feeling off balance and out of breath, which he believed was his asthma.

"I find something different every day, and I realized just a couple weeks ago that I may have had this as long as 15 to 20 years ago," he said. He added that he would get "what they call the hallucinations," adding, "My wife would say 'You were hitting me last night in bed.' "

"I was having these really horrible dreams, and I didn't know there was a physical component, sometimes I'd fall out of bed... really bad," he stated. "I realized just a few weeks ago, that was an early symptom of Parkinson's."

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Source: “AOL Entertainment”