Inside John Candy's Final Days: How He Died and What We Know Now

John Candy made people feel good just by showing up. The new documentary 'John Candy: I Like Me' is about that big-hearted screen presence—and the tougher stuff he carried when the cameras weren’t rolling. It celebrates the guy we loved and digs into the anxiety and health issues that were chasing him down long before his final days.

The loss that still stings

Candy died on March 4, 1994, at just 43. He had a heart attack while shooting the western 'Wagons East' in Mexico. It was sudden, it was brutal, and it cut short one of comedy’s most generous voices.

Behind the laughs: anxiety hits hard

By the early 90s—when his career was still humming—Candy was getting hammered by severe anxiety. We’re talking all-day waves of panic and insomnia that left him drained. In the doc, friends and family say the attacks could be triggered by crowds, especially places like airports.

Kelvin Pruenster says Candy wanted to understand what was happening to him rather than jump straight to medication. He talked openly with close friends, not to vent, but to figure it out. It’s the kind of detail that tracks if you watched the way his warmth carried into every performance.

The health stack and the family shadow

Here’s where it gets very inside-baseball and very human: Candy wasn’t just managing anxiety. He also had a real cluster of risk factors and a rough family history of heart disease that haunted him. Director Carl Reiner, who worked with Candy on 1985’s 'Summer Rental,' put it starkly:

"He felt he had inherited in his genes a Damoclean sword... So it didn’t matter what he did."

That fatalism wasn’t coming from nowhere. Candy had been dealing with obesity, heart concerns, addiction, and habits that didn’t help—like smoking a pack a day and eating badly. But he also kept trying to turn the ship around.

• He battled severe anxiety and frequent panic attacks, especially in crowded spaces.
• He struggled with obesity and other heart-related risks.
• He had a strong family history of heart disease: his father and his brother both had heart attacks.
• He smoked a pack a day and wrestled with unhealthy eating and addiction.
• He repeatedly tried to fix it—trainers, diets, lifestyle changes—the whole cycle.

He really did try

Candy’s son, Christopher Michael, has said his dad worked at his weight and health constantly—new diets, trainers, whatever might help. The message from the family isn’t that Candy ignored the warning signs; it’s that he was fighting a problem with roots deeper than he realized.

The kids and the hindsight

Christopher Michael and his sister, Jennifer Anne, have leaned into prevention and fitness as adults. They’ve got more information about their family’s medical history than their dad ever did, and they use it. They also wish he had fully grasped how serious that history was, earlier.

The documentary

'John Candy: I Like Me' aims to hold both truths at once: the joyous, generous comic who made audiences feel seen, and the private man pushing back against anxiety, addiction, and genetics. If you loved Candy—and honestly, who didn’t—that balance matters.

'John Candy: I Like Me' premieres on Prime Video on October 10, 2025.