Forest Whitaker is a family man, married to Keisha Nash with four kids. Forest Whitaker is known for his role in The Butler. Were you ever in the middle of watching a movie with Forest Whitaker playing a role and wanted to know what was up with Forest Whitaker eye? He suffers from a hereditary condition known as Ptosis. Ptosis is a drooping of the upper eyelid. Ptosis is also known as lazy eye.
Causes
Ptosis can be caused by a number of factors that affect the muscles, nerves, or skin of the eyelids. The levator muscle (the muscle that allows your eyelid to move up and down) can become weaken due to injury or age. Horner syndrome can also contribute to ptosis.
READ: 5 Signs You Need To See The Eye Doctor
Symptoms
- Dropping of one or both eyelids
- Increased tearing
- Impaired vision
Treatment
- Patients should be monitored every 3-12 months for signs of amblyopia due to congenital ptosis.
- Patients can get blepharoplasty surgery to treat the drooping eye.
When asked about his eye, Forest doesn’t shy away from the topic at all. “My eye? It’s a genetic thing. My dad had it and now I have it,” explains Forest. “You know, I just found out that it may be correctable a little bit, because it does impair my vision. When I look up, I lose sight in this eye. I think maybe for other people, it informs the way they see me. But I don’t really think about this eye, other than the times people talk about it, or when people take photographs of me sometimes they might say stuff about it. I don’t think it makes me look bad or anything. It just is. I still strive to connect with people.”
“It’s important to me to connect with people, with feelings,” Whitaker continues. “That’s always been a goal in my work. In the beginning, that was the reason I was doing it, to find some connection with everyone, not as a movie star, but to find something in a character that would connect, that was part of the spirit that we’re all connected to. I don’t think about it in terms like that anymore, but I know I’m still guided to those kinds of projects, and I’ll always be guided to them. I’m not attracted to anything that doesn’t have to do with real relationships. I like fantasy, I like myth, and to me myth is even more connected to our core.”