A doctor who cared for her father through his final years with dementia has blasted Hollywood superstar George Clooney for what she calls a ‘dangerous’ and ‘irresponsible’ new film that risks encouraging vulnerable people to end their lives.
Dr Ramona Coelho, a family physician from Ontario, Canada, said Clooney’s upcoming movie In Love — about a man with early-onset Alzheimer’s who travels to Switzerland for an assisted suicide — will ‘romanticize death’ and trigger a ‘suicide contagion’ among people with dementia.
‘Turning assisted suicide into a Hollywood love story is dangerous,’ Coelho told the Daily Mail in an exclusive interview.
‘It romanticizes death for people who are vulnerable and afraid.’
Clooney, 64, will star in In Love, based on Amy Bloom’s 2022 memoir In Love: A Memoir of Love and Loss.
The story follows Connecticut couple Bloom and her husband Brian Ameche, an architect diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s in his mid-60s. Refusing to face the decline, he chose to die ‘standing tall, not on his knees’ at the Swiss euthanasia clinic Dignitas.
Clooney plays Ameche, with Annette Bening as Bloom. Filming begins in New England next month.
To many, it’s a love story about dignity and choice.
Actors George Clooney and Annette Bening will star as the husband and wife couple grappling with an Alzheimer’s diagnose
Dr Ramona Coelho cared for her dad during his dementia. She said Clooney’s movie could encourage other sufferers to end their lives prematurely
To Coelho, it’s a public-health risk.
‘If George Clooney makes death look beautiful, sexy and noble, what message does that send to people who are sick, elderly or disabled?’ she said.
‘When death is presented as an answer to suffering, it encourages suicide contagion — the opposite of what we teach in suicide prevention.’
Clooney’s production company, Smokehouse Pictures, did not respond to requests for comment.
Supporters of In Love say the story isn’t about promoting assisted suicide but about portraying one couple’s personal journey with honesty and love.
Author Bloom, a former Yale scholar, has said her memoir is about ‘autonomy, intimacy, and truth-telling’ — the right to face death without shame.
Clooney has long supported films that explore moral complexity, and those close to the project say the subject will be handled ‘with sensitivity, not sensationalism.’
But Coelho speaks from painful experience.
Her father Kevin Coelho, a businessman and teacher from Dorchester, Ontario, developed dementia several years ago.
When his condition worsened, she moved her parents into her home in London, Ontario, and cared for him until his natural death this March.
What she witnessed, she says, was ‘a transformation.’
‘My father went from being somebody who took care of everyone else to a man who could sit still and enjoy life — but in a different, mindful way.
Kevin Coelho, a businessman and teacher from Dorchester, Ontario, died in March after suffering from dementia
In Love is being made by Smokehouse Pictures, the production company co-founded by longtime friends Grant Heslov (left) and George Clooney (right)
He didn’t know who the grandkids were anymore, but every day he talked about how beautiful the trees were in Canada. He never stopped seeing beauty.’
Until the day he died, he spoke of the trees.
‘That joy and wonder never left him,’ she said. ‘He died naturally, with all of us holding him. It was beautiful.’
Those memories, she said, stand in stark contrast to the fear and panic portrayed in In Love.
‘People say they’d rather be dead than have dementia. That’s the cruelest thing you could say to a loving daughter,’ she said.
‘My father was still the world to me — he always will be.’
Canada legalized Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) in 2016, initially limited to terminally ill adults whose deaths were reasonably foreseeable.
But the law has since expanded to include people with chronic illness, disability, and soon — pending a parliamentary review — those with certain mental health conditions.
Dementia cases remain controversial because of questions about capacity and consent.
In the US, only a dozen states and Washington, DC, allow physician-assisted death under strict conditions.
None permit it for dementia patients, and Connecticut — where Amy Bloom and her husband lived — does not allow it at all.
That’s why the couple traveled to Switzerland, home to the Dignitas clinic, one of the few places where foreigners can legally end their lives.
Beyond her own family, Coelho has become one of Canada’s most outspoken critics of the country’s MAiD regime — one of the most permissive in the world.
The movie is based on the real-life Connecticut couple Brian Ameche and Amy Bloom
They travelled to Switzerland’s notorious end of life clinic Dignitas, where Brian ended his life
As a member of Ontario’s MAiD Death Review Committee, she has examined cases of dementia patients approved for euthanasia — and what she’s seen, she says, is alarming.
A recent report from Ontario’s Chief Coroner’s Office found clinicians were rushing through lethal approvals and failing to safeguard the vulnerable.
It described cases where patients with little comprehension or none at all were euthanized after minimal assessment.
In one case, an elderly woman known as Mrs 6F was approved for MAiD after a single meeting in which a family member relayed her supposed wish to die.
Her consent on the day of her death was interpreted through hand squeezes.
In another, a man known as Mr A with early Alzheimer’s signed a waiver years earlier.
After being hospitalized with delirium, he was deemed ‘capable’ for a brief moment — and euthanized.
Reviewers warned that such cases expose deep flaws in how capacity is assessed and consent verified.
‘People are being approved for assisted death out of fear — fear of decline, fear of being a burden — not because they’re suffering intolerably right now,’ Coelho said.
‘Only 13 percent of dementia patients who die by MAiD ever see palliative care. That tells you everything about our failure to care before we kill.’
Advocates for MAiD say it offers dignity and control to people who would otherwise face unbearable decline.
Celebrated American writer Amy Bloom co-wrote the screenplay for the upcoming movie
Her 2022 book describes how Brian, in his own words, wanted to die ‘standing tall, not on his knees’
Groups such as Dying with Dignity Canada argue that proper safeguards are in place and that cases of abuse are rare
But for Coelho, the real issue isn’t dementia but discrimination.
‘The problem is ageism, ableism and fear disguised as compassion,’ she said.
Her father’s illness revealed the same systemic failings.
When he suddenly became too weak to stand, an emergency doctor dismissed it as ‘normal dementia decline’ and tried to send him home.
‘If I hadn’t insisted on tests, my father would have died,’ she said.
‘He had pneumonia, not decline. Once treated, he got better — and we had more precious months together.’
She worries about families without her medical knowledge.
‘Patients trust the system. But sometimes the system gives up on them,’ she said.
Coelho believes dementia care must focus on meeting needs, not ending lives.
‘If people with dementia have their needs met, their quality of life can be high. The suffering comes when those needs are ignored.’
Coelho admits she hasn’t read Bloom’s memoir but is deeply uneasy about its premise — a devoted wife helping her husband die.
‘Supportive couples that help each other die always worry me,’ she said.
‘What looks like love can sometimes be coercion. We know how much pressure can exist within relationships, even when it looks loving from the outside.’
She noted that many people who seek assisted death do so out of guilt or fear of burdening their family.
The nondescript room on the outskirts of Zurich, Switzerland, where Dignitas visitors end their lives
Doctor-assisted deaths are widely available in Canada, though heavily restricted in the US
‘A loving spouse should say, ‘You could never be a burden — you’re my reason for living.”
Coelho warns that Hollywood’s romantic treatment of euthanasia risks inspiring imitation.
‘We have strict rules about how suicide is reported because we know that romanticizing it leads to copycat deaths,’ she said. ‘Why should assisted suicide be any different?’
She compared it to the spike in suicides after Robin Williams’s death.
‘Media messaging matters. When death is presented as beautiful, it encourages more of it.’
‘MAiD was meant to be an exceptional last resort for intolerable suffering,’ she added. ‘When Hollywood sells it as an act of love, it becomes entertainment — and that’s profoundly irresponsible.’
Clooney’s star power, she fears, will send a scary message to the roughly 8 million Alzheimer’s sufferers across the US and Canada.
‘If Canada can’t protect people with dementia — the most vulnerable among us — then our system isn’t safe. And stories that glorify dying instead of living make it even less so.’
Advocates for people with disabilities share her outrage. Ian McIntosh, executive director of Not Dead Yet, called Clooney’s movie ‘a disability snuff film by any other name.’
‘Hollywood keeps depicting the everyday experiences of disabled people as a fate worse than death,’ he said.
Whether to allow assisted dying stirs strong feelings, including in the UK (pictured), where a law change is being debated
‘Million Dollar Baby and Me Before You were panned for glorifying suicide as rational, even noble, if you’re disabled. In Love will be no different.’
Coelho agrees. For her, this is not about politics or religion — it’s about human dignity.
‘My father showed me that even when memory fades, life still has beauty,’ she said.
‘He couldn’t remember names, but he remembered love. He noticed the trees. He found joy. That’s what real dignity looks like.’
And that’s the story she wishes Hollywood would tell.
‘If vulnerable people start believing that dying is their duty, we’ll have lost something precious as a society. We should be telling stories about how to live — not how to die.’
