A devastating diagnosis before his 30th birthday, multiple retirements, and loss of his creative
outlets.
It's been a difficult road for Michael J. Fox, but the star has pushed forward in both
his life and career.
This is his tragic story.
In any discussion about Michael J. Fox's misfortunes, one can hardly avoid mentioning Parkinson's
disease.
As CBS News reports, Fox was at the height of his fame and personal glory in 1991 when
he was diagnosed with the degenerative condition.
At the time, the 29-year-old was a massively famous star who had just married his Family
Ties co-star, Tracy Pollan.
As you'd probably expect, the news was devastating, and during the seven years Fox chose to keep
his situation out of the limelight, he sought treatments that included drugs and surgery.
Initially, Fox kept a pretty tight lip on his situation.
He also felt bad about Pollan, feeling that the diagnosis was an unfairly heavy load for
her to bear, as well.
Describing the initial impact of the news, Fox had this to say:
"So very early in the marriage she got this dumped on her.
And the moment that I told her I was realizing was the last time we cried about it together.
We haven't cried about Parkinson's since.
We've just dealt with it and lived our lives.
But we cried about it that first time."
Since revealing his diagnosis in 1998, Fox has set up the Michael J. Fox Foundation for
Parkinson's research, and while he doesn't make light of the horrors of the condition,
he remains a self-professed optimist.
"As I began to understand what research might promise for the future I became hopeful that
I would not face the terrible sufferings so many with Parkinson's endure."
Life was difficult for Michael J. Fox after he received his Parkinson's disease diagnosis
in 1991.
According to People, this led him down some fairly dark roads for a while.
Before getting married, Fox suffered from self-described rock star tendencies, and as
he told The New York Times Magazine in 2019, his younger self was known to pull crazy stunts.
Fox told the outlet:
"[I would ride] in a limo with my head out the sunroof and a beer in each hand."
Fox said goodbye to his more hard-drinking ways when he married Tracy Pollan in 1988,
but the diagnosis soon caused him to start again in an effort to cope with the situation.
This went on until 1992, when Pollan found him passed out in their living room after
a night of drinking.
Fox found out there and then just how fed up she was with his alcohol abuse.
Describing the moment his wife faced off with him, Fox had this recollection:
"I did a slow scan up from her feet to her face, expecting to find her really angry.
She wasn't.
She was just bored."
After this, Pollan simply asked him,
"Is this what you want?
Is this what you want to be?"
Fox stopped drinking there and then and turned to therapy as a far healthier coping mechanism.
If you or anyone you know is struggling with addiction issues, help is available.
Visit the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration website or contact
SAMHSA's National Helpline at 1-800-662-HELP (4357).
Michael J. Fox has made many of his roles outright iconic, which makes it all the more
surprising to hear that he came close to missing his first major role in Family Ties.
According to producer Gary David Goldberg, he initially didn't like Fox due to a flubbed
audition in which the actor had made the character of Alex P. Keaton too dark.
As such, Goldberg pushed for Matthew Broderick to get the role instead.
When Broderick ultimately declined, a persistent casting director convinced Goldberg to begrudgingly
allow Fox a second audition round, and fortunately, the young actor nailed it.
This must've been a pretty important moment for him, because in an interview with the
New York Post, Fox revealed that Broderick used to be something of an accidental professional
nemesis to him.
Fox remembered:
"He'd usually go in first for auditions, and you'd hear hands shaking.
I was always losing jobs to Matthew Broderick."
Perhaps ironically, Fox's commitment to Family Ties ended up nearly costing him the even
more iconic part of Marty McFly in Back to the Future, according to People.
Goldberg guarded Fox so intensely that although the makers of the movie really wanted the
actor to play Marty, they ultimately cast Eric Stoltz in the role.
However, the producers soon realized that Stoltz was a bad fit for the part, and promptly
unleashed a charm arsenal on Goldberg until he agreed to allow Fox to portray Marty.
The fact that Michael J. Fox has Parkinson's disease may be a little abstract for those
of us who aren't familiar with the condition.
In order to get a sense of the actor's struggles, one only has to look at what Fox has had to
go through to keep things in check.
According to People, the actor is reliant on his medication in order to keep his tremors
under control, and per CNN, in early 1998 he went under the knife for a brain operation
called a thalamotomy to help control the Parkinson's tremors.
As The Irish Times notes, Fox's lack of mobility means that he's often confined to a wheelchair
during his travels — a situation even the generally optimistic actor has come to detest.
"I have a wheelchair that I use every now and again.
It still sucks."
Fox told the The Irish Times:
"Generally the person in control is a stranger, an airport or hotel employee.
I'm sure that if we could look each other in the eye, we'd recognize our mutual humanity.
But often in the wheelchair, I'm luggage.
I'm not expected to say much.
Just sit still."
So, what would happen if Fox neglected to take his medication and allowed the condition
to take over in full?
As the actor has written in his book, No Time Like the Future, the answer is grim:
"Absent a chemical intervention, Parkinson's will render me frozen, immobile, stone-faced,
and mute — entirely of the mercy of my environment."
Despite his struggles with his health, Michael J. Fox has amassed a pretty amazing acting
résumé, with an impressive 76 on-screen roles and a great number of other credits
to his name.
As befits both his long, hard road and his amazing tenacity, he bears the distinction
of having retired from the industry not once, but twice.
Per Fox's official website, the actor's first official retirement came in 2000, when he
left his role as Spin City's main character Mike Flaherty after wrapping up his 100th
episode.
For years, he focused all his energies on patient advocacy and working with the Parkinson's
research foundation bearing his name.
However, he eventually decided to return to acting after a decade away from the screen,
and he even took on a number of starring and recurring roles in major productions like
The Good Wife.
According to ABC News, the second — and possibly final — retirement came in 2019,
when the 60-year-old star revealed that his diminishing vocal talents had caused him to
call it quits with acting.
Fox revealed in 2020:
"I reached the point where I couldn't rely on my ability to speak on any given day, which
meant I couldn't act comfortably at all anymore.
So, last year I gave it up."
As People reports, Fox has also named his increasingly ailing short-term memory as a
major reason acting has been getting more and more difficult for him.
Michael J. Fox's decades-long experience with Parkinson's disease has obviously not been
an easy one, and as the actor revealed in a 2020 interview with People, it has taken
a toll on him — and some of the things he's lost are quite surprising.
"I mean, it sucks.
I hate it.
I wish, I wish I wasn't in this situation."
Unfortunately, they include one of the most important tools at an actor's disposal: memory.
It's very hard to act if you have no idea what your lines are, and this is particularly
true for Fox, who has relied heavily on his great memory when he's prepared for his roles.
Fox said:
"I always had a real proficiency for lines and memorization.
And I had some extreme situations where the last couple of jobs I did were actually really
word-heavy parts.
I struggled during both of them."
Fox has also addressed the memory changes that can come with Parkinson's disease on
his official website.
To educate people affected by the condition about the ways it may alter the ways a person
remembers and thinks — and to offer ways to cope with the situation — Fox's team
has created a downloadable guide about the subject, called Thinking, Memory and Parkinson's
Disease.
In 2006, Michael J. Fox became the target of conservative criticism for appearing in
a campaign video for a Democratic candidate vying for a Senate seat in Missouri.
Fox's appearance in the ad was noticeably disheveled, as the tremors brought on by his
Parkinson's disease were plain to see.
Influential and controversial conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh immediately targeted
Fox, claiming that the actor was either deliberately off his medication or even playing up his
symptoms.
Fox was quick to dismiss the claims, noting that his condition was far too severe to skip
medication for effect.
Fox said:
"At this point now, if I didn't take medication I wouldn't be able to speak."
He also revealed that while his appearance in the ad indeed showed him in a sorrier state
than usual, the reason behind this was very different than what Limbaugh speculated.
Fox said:
"The irony is that I was too medicated.
I was dyskinesic.
Because the thing about [...] being symptomatic is that it's not comfortable.
No one wants to be symptomatic; it's like being hit with a hammer."
As Fox's official website notes, dyskinesia is a condition that may affect those with
Parkinson's disease, and it can cause all sorts of uncomfortable, involuntary movements
of the body.
In other words, definitely not the kind of thing you'd invite upon yourself to earn sympathy
points in a campaign ad.
In all fairness, Limbaugh soon apologized.
It's easy to think of Michael J. Fox as a political actor.
After all, his first famous role was Alex P. Keaton in Family Ties — a young Republican
who constantly clashed with his flower power parents Steven and Elyse, played by Michael
Gross and Meredith Baxter.
Per CBS News, by the mid-2000s Fox was quite notable for his real-life political work,
too, having publicly endorsed several political figures, to the point of appearing in campaign
ads.
Interestingly, Fox's personal beliefs have often appeared to lean toward those of Democrats,
but the actor himself has been quick to note that he's also supported and voted for Republican
candidates.
Ultimately, he says, he doesn't much care for politics at all, but has been drawn in
because of his personal advocacy.
Fox has said:
"I don't really care about politics."
He's also noted that:
"[Parkinson's] disease is a non-partisan problem that requires a bipartisan solution."
Michael J. Fox is a massively creative individual.
You might know that he's a talented actor, but as People notes, he's also adept in a
number of other areas, including sketching and music.
According to Guitar World, in fact, Fox is a competent guitarist who played the guitar
in the iconic "Johnny B. Goode" scene in Back to the Future, which is extremely impressive
when you take into account the fact that he also performed the signature stage moves of
several real-life six-string legends in the scene.
He even played with Joan Jett as recently as 2018.
In fact, historically, one of the few creative endeavors Fox has openly admitted to being
bad at is dancing.
The actor has stated:
"I dance like a duck.
I can't dance."
Unfortunately, Fox's Parkinson's disease has taken a number of these outlets from him,
one by one.
Fox said in 2020:
"My guitar playing is no good.
My sketching is no good anymore, my dancing never was good, and acting is getting tougher
to do."
Fortunately, there's still something he's able to do.
The actor revealed:
"So it's down to writing.
Luckily, I really enjoy it."
And luckily for the rest of us, he's quite good at it, too.
According to Fox's official website, he's written no less than four books so far, three
of which bear the proud words "New York Times bestseller" on the cover.