Editor’s note: The original August 2023 version of this article was lost. The Lee Daily Register rebuilt it in October 2026 from the sources cited below, and added what happened afterward. The original went beyond the record by describing how Lucas manages his diabetes day to day, including his exercise and diet; no source for those details was found, and they have been removed.
The documented record of George Lucas’s health is short. It includes a diabetes diagnosis that kept him out of the Vietnam War and a car crash in his teens that he survived with broken bones and bruised lungs. The Lee Daily Register found no credible report of any other serious illness.
A diagnosis at the draft physical
Lucas was drafted for the Vietnam War when he was 23, shortly after finishing university, according to Diabetes UK, the British diabetes charity. Doctors who examined him at his physical found that he had Type 2 diabetes and told him he could not serve, the charity says.
Diabetes UK also says Lucas is believed to have inherited the condition from his paternal grandfather, and it credits him with keeping his blood sugar under control for about 50 years. The charity’s profile does not describe his treatment.
The crash that ended his racing plans
Years before the draft, Lucas was seriously injured in Modesto, California, where he grew up. On June 12, 1962, three days before his high school graduation, his small Autobianchi Bianchina was broadsided as he turned toward his family’s home, Biography.com reported. The car rolled, his racing belt snapped, and he was thrown onto the pavement just before the car hit a walnut tree.
He was taken to the hospital unconscious, with several broken bones and bruised lungs, and regained consciousness within hours. The account says the crash convinced the teenager, who had dreamed of racing cars for a living, to give up that plan. He later enrolled in the film school at the University of Southern California.
A museum in the works
Lucas, the filmmaker behind the “Star Wars” and “Indiana Jones” sagas, as the Cannes Film Festival has described him, has also been working on a museum. He and Mellody Hobson co-founded the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, a collection devoted to visual storytelling that was being built in Los Angeles’ Exposition Park and had not yet opened.
What happened next
Lucas has made several public appearances since this article was first published. The Cannes Film Festival announced in April 2024 that he would receive an honorary Palme d’Or at its closing ceremony on May 25, 2024, according to the festival.
On July 27, 2025, he made his first appearance at San Diego Comic-Con, where he previewed the museum, IndieWire reported. The museum opened to the public on Sept. 22, 2026, and Lucas and Hobson greeted the first 100 visitors through the doors, City News Service reported via Spectrum News.
