By Sandra Bullock’s longtime partner, Bryan Randall, has died after a private battle with ALS, his family revealed on Monday. According to a statement obtained by Yahoo Entertainment, the photographer — who started dating the Oscar-winning actress in 2015 — “passed away peacefully” over the weekend. He was 57.
“It is with great sadness that we share that on Aug. 5, Bryan Randall passed away peacefully after a three-year battle with ALS,” his family shared. “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. 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,” his family added.
The Randall family concluded, “At this time we ask for privacy to grieve and to come to terms with the impossibility of saying goodbye to Bryan.”
Instead of flowers, the Randall family requests any donations to be made to the ALS Association and the Massachusetts General Hospital.
Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, known as ALS, is a nervous system disease that affects nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord, according to Mayo Clinic. The disease causes loss of muscle control and gets worse over time.
Bullock and Randall met when he photographed her son Louis’s birthday in January 2015. They started dating shortly after, but the 59-year-old actress purposefully kept their relationship out of the spotlight. Bullock, who went through a very public divorce with Jesse James in 2010, called Randall the love of her life.
“I am someone who went through the divorce process,” she explained on Red Table Talk in 2021. “I found the love of my life. We share two beautiful children — three children, his older daughter. It’s the best thing ever.”
Bullock — who is mother to son Louis, 13, and daughter Laila, 10 — ruled out getting married again.
“So, I don’t want to say do it like I do it, but I don’t need a paper to be a devoted partner or a devoted mother. 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 added.
The Bird Box star said Randall is a “great” example of someone she wants around her kids.
“He’s the example that I would want my children to have,” Bullock added. “I have a partner who’s very Christian and there are two different ways of looking at things. I don’t always agree with him; he doesn’t always agree with me. But he is an example, even when I don’t agree with him, that I [think] if they can take away from that, if that is where they feel drawn to, then he’s the exact right parent to be in this position. I’m stubborn, but sometimes I need to sit back and listen and go, ‘You’re saying it differently but we mean exactly the same thing.’ It’s hard to co-parent, because I just want to do it myself.”
This article originally appeared on Yahoo.
