'You're Grateful for the Good Days'

You know him as agent Jack Bristow, father of secret agent Sydney Bristow, in the edgy, popular TV spy drama Alias. You've seen him in Titanic, Sleepless in Seattle and Legally Blonde. Maybe you saw him on Broadway in Damn Yankees, Sweeney Todd or Art.

But celebrated actor Victor Garber has another role: He's the family caregiver for his 80-year-old mother, Hope, who has Alzheimer's disease.

Garber accepts the part willingly. "It seems so obvious to me that this is what a child would do," he says. He isn't new to the devastation of Alzheimer's: His father died of the disease in the early 1990s.

"The stress is unbelievable, and I've had to really learn to deal with that," Garber, 55, says. He brought his mother to Los Angeles to be near him when he moved from New York to film the weekly Alias episodes.

"I allow myself to feel it—I sometimes find myself weeping, even when I'm with her," says Garber, who was recently honored with the Alzheimer's Association Caregiver Award. "She'll say something that's so poignant and heartbreaking, and I'll have to excuse myself."

Hope Garber—a former singer who had a TV show in the family's hometown of London, Ontario, Canada—lives in an assisted living facility. Garber visits her frequently and takes her to his home as often as he can. He recalls his mother becoming "really angry" because she wanted to stay with him.

She has hung the phone up on him several times. "That's hard," he says. "I want to say 'Come on.' " But then he tells himself, "It's a disease … it's not personal."

It's particularly painful, Garber says, when his mother begs him to find a job for her because she feels useless. "Every day is different. You think everything is okay, and then suddenly it's not," he says. "You're grateful for the good days."

He advises families struggling with the disease to get outside help and to join support groups. "You can't do it alone," Garber says. "Share everything with your family and get everyone involved. This is a disease that affects the entire family.

"As more people get older, more will be diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease," Garber says. "The baby boomers now whose parents are going through this will themselves be in this situation in 10 years. That's why awareness has to be brought and we have to find a cure."

He even worries a little for himself. "Having had two parents with this disease, every day I look for signs of it," he says. "The fear is there; I try not to indulge in it, but it's there."