Tim Allen, who recently lent his voice to Buzz Lightyear once again in Toy Story 5, is reflecting on his father being killed by a drunk driver when he was just 11.
When asked about the impact of the 1964 accident, Allen told Us Weekly, “I kind of turned into a different person after that. Trauma has that effect. I turned into my spiritual or metaphysical or religious self.”
Allen added that his father, Gerald, shaped many of the interests he still holds today. “My blood father was really involved in pruning the car [and] all the stuff I really like now. My dad got me into that. I really missed that connection. I didn’t have that with my stepfather, but he was an extremely wonderful guy,” he said.
Two years after his father’s death, Tim’s mother, Martha, married her high school sweetheart, a business executive and widower with three children. In 1967, Tim, his mother and his five siblings moved to Birmingham, Mich., to live with his stepdad and step-siblings.
During his 2006 appearance on Inside the Actors Studio, Tim detailed the events leading up to the crash and its devastating aftermath. He revealed that he was supposed to be in the car with his father that day but had chosen to visit a neighbor instead (per Us Weekly).
Tim said Gerald had “taken six kids and my mom to a Colorado football game” the day he died. The 72-year-old actor recalled, “On the way home, middle of the afternoon, a guy swerved across the I-70,” adding that Gerald “broke his neck” in the crash.
In a 2012 interview, Tim admitted he had difficulty coping and coming to terms with the loss.
He said, “I knew my father was dead, but I was never satisfied with why he was dead. I wanted answers that minute from God… And I’ve had a tumultuous relationship with my creator ever since” (per Christianity Today).
Tim said his father was the only person to die in the crash during his 2025 appearance on “The Way I Heard It with Mike Rowe.” He elaborated on the severity of the accident, saying, “[My father] died in my mother’s lap. My other two brothers were thrown around the car. A lot of kids were hurt.”
He noted that the tragic event “started [him] on asking questions, generally getting no answers.”
Tim further added, “He was a great dad, love of my life… The pain of it never stopped. The discomfort of it I took for many years.”
Tim has now accepted the reality. In September 2025, he took to X to share that Erika Kirk’s speech at the memorial service for her conservative activist husband, Charlie Kirk, helped him forgive the driver who caused the crash.
“When Erika Kirk spoke the words on the man who killed her husband: ‘That man… that young man… I forgive him.’ That moment deeply affected me. I have struggled for over 60 years to forgive the man who killed my Dad. I will say those words now as I type: ‘I forgive the man who killed my father,’” he wrote.