Liza Minnelli's Health Issues Are Numerous and Have Plagued Her For Some Time

The daughter of two legends who became a legend in her own right, Liza Minnelli has had a life marked by tragedy, drama, and plenty of entertainment. Although she's far less public than she once was, Liza will still occasional show up at one event or another, usually in a wheelchair.

During those public appearances, some people have noticed that Liza appears to shake. Naturally, this has made them wonder about the overall state of her health. Here's what we know.

Liza is suffering from a number of health conditions. According to some reports, one of those conditions is dementia, which has caused her to lose some cognitive ability and also frequently causes her to shake.

“Liza often fidgets, her hands shake, and she looks horrible,” an insider told RadarOnline. “She sometimes doesn’t know who she’s talking to and has a hard time focusing.”

In addition to her dementia, Liza is also a recovering addict and alcoholic, and she was addicted to valium at the time of her mother's death. That addiction was part of her life for decades, even at the height of her success.

What's more, she suffered a broken jaw while performing in 2007, and she broke both of her wrists in 2013. These kinds of bone breaks are more likely as people age, but they seem to have left Liza particularly debilitated.

Liza's frail image was perpetuated in part by her appearance at the 2022 Oscars, where she handed out the award for Best Picture alongside Lady Gaga. Many were shocked by her apparent frailty during the ceremony, but in the years since, Liza and those around her have claimed that the producers behind the ceremony put her in a position that seemed designed to make her look weak.

In announcing her memoir in 2024, Liza said that she was "a sabotaged appearance at the Oscars," although declined to provide any more detail. That claim was reinforced by Michael Feinstein, a friend of Liza's who is a singer and also collaborated with her on the memoir. In 2022, he told The Jess Cagle Show that Liza's appearance had been "sabotaged."

“Sabotaged. That’s a terrible word to use but she only agreed to appear on the Oscars if she was in a director’s chair, because she’s been having back trouble,” Michael explained. “She said, ‘I don’t want people to see me limping out there.’ She said, ‘You know, I want to look good. I don’t want people to worry about me.’”

“Then literally five minutes before she went on, when she sat in the director’s chair back there, and because I guess they were all shaken up because of everything that had happened earlier,” Feinstein said (referring to Will Smith's slap of Chris Rock), “The stage manager said, ‘Well, she has to be in a wheelchair.’” He further claimed that that last-minute decision was part of why Liza looked so disoriented on stage.