World Alzheimer’s Month is the international campaign every September to raise awareness and challenge the stigma that surrounds dementia. The campaign was launched in 2012 and World Alzheimer’s Day is on 21 September each year.

With that in mind we have chosen Jim Broadbent as our Inspirational Diversity Champion of the Month.

Jim is an actor, graduating from the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art in 1972.  He first came to prominence in television comedy in shows such as Only Fools and Horses and Time Bandits with his breakthrough role coming in Mike Leigh’s Life is Sweet.  His notable roles since then include Bridget Jones’ Diary, Hot Fuzz, The Iron Lady, Game of Thrones to name just a few.  He has played Horace Slughorn in the Harry Potter film series and Samuel Gruber in the amazing Paddington films.

He has received many awards including an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor in Iris, a BAFTA for Moulin Rouge and Longford and an Emmy for The Gathering Storm.

He was awarded an OBE in 2002 but declined stating that there were more deserving recipients than actors and that the British Empire was not something he wanted to “celebrate”.

Jim is an Ambassador for Dementia UK and in 2018 presented a BBC Lifeline Appeal, in which he spoke movingly about his own mother’s experience of dementia, as well as highlighting the life-changing support that the Dementia UK specialist nurses are able to offer families facing dementia – in communities, GP practices, hospitals, care homes and hospices, and on the Admiral Nurse Dementia Helpline.

To find out more about Alzheimers’ Month see here https://www.alzheimers.org.uk/get-involved/world-alzheimers-month

To find out more about Dementia UK see here https://www.dementiauk.org/

To find out more about Jim see here https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000980/bio