We hate to see good people go through difficult times, as is the case with
Michael J. Fox. Let's take a look at his life and career to gain a deeper understanding of
the troubles he has faced and how he manages to maintain his famous optimism through it all.
Can you imagine Family Ties without Michael J. Fox? Back to the Future? Well,
he almost got iced out of both pivotal roles. Family Ties producer Gary David
Goldberg did not like Fox's audition and offered Matthew Broderick the role of Alex P. Keaton,
but, as Goldberg told The Interviews, Broderick refused to move to Los Angeles.
"I think Matthew got a sense of just what other opportunities were out there for
him in New York, uh, didn't want to come to California, and Mike Fox was the next guy I saw."
Thankfully, casting director Judith Weiner
persuaded Goldberg to bring Fox back for another audition.
Back to the Future producer Bob Gale told People that Fox was not initially
cast because he was needed on Family Ties during Meredith Baxter's maternity leave.
Filming started with Eric Stoltz in the role of Marty McFly,
but the director wasn't happy with his portrayal and brought in Fox to replace him.
"Gary said I could do it as long as I did Family Ties in the daytime,
just showed up regular and did my work, and then said that I could do it at night."
With the success of these roles, Fox almost got caught in the rat race.
He told The New York Times he wanted to be a, quote, "rock star," saying:
"That's what I thought being famous was [...] I was kind of an idiot. [...] I'd
be riding in a limo with my head out the sunroof and a beer in each hand,
thinking, 'Who expected this success from me?'"
"Get out of town, I didn't know you did anything creative.”
The actor saw his fame as a matter of luck, saying:
"I was comfortable with the idea that I had won the lottery,
and that made me less respectful of what talent I had."
Fate stepped in to separate Fox from the trappings of fame when he was diagnosed with Parkinson's
disease, a neurodegenerative disorder leading to loss of motor skills, in 1991—just as he was
being solidified as a box-office superstar. He did not publicly reveal the diagnosis until he opened
up about it to People in 1998. In hindsight, he views Parkinson's as a blessing because it, quote,
"got his head in the game." Being diagnosed with the disease in the prime of his life
changed his outlook on everything, and as the Canadian-born actor told The New York Times,
it made him realize, quote, "there are bigger things than being a rock star."
"I really worried about it. But then I went online,
and I went to some Parkinson's chat rooms, and I saw the reactions of people,
and it was the first time I realized I was part of a community, and I kinda went, 'Wow.'"
Fox says he went through a deep depression following his diagnosis,
which drove him to drinking heavily. The actor recalled to Howard Stern:
"I used to drink to party, but now I was drinking alone and [...] every day."
Fox told The New York Times he made some ill-thought-out personal and
professional decisions in the wake of his diagnosis,
but that he finally came to accept and understand the reality of it in 1994, saying:
"That's when I started to accept the disease — and acceptance doesn't mean resignation.
It means understanding and dealing straightforwardly."
There was also a force for good in his life steering him in the right direction: his on-screen
girlfriend from Family Ties, Tracy Pollan, who is now his wife. Fox revealed in his 2020 memoir,
No Time Like the Future, that one of their oldest son's earliest memories included,
quote, "going to the fridge to get me beers."
Pollan looked at Fox in his messy state and asked, "Is this what you want?"
"All I had to do was put it in the context of my family, I had a young son and I was
married, and I didn't want to screw that up."
That view from the outside is what it took for him to
stop drinking and look forward toward the future.
When the five-time Primetime Emmy winner started having real difficulty with movement on the set of
Spin City in 1999, he knew it was time to exit stage right. But Fox didn't drop this news on
his fellow producers out of the blue. According to People, both DreamWorks' Jeffrey Katzenberg
and ABC president Bob Iger knew about Fox's Parkinson's before the show began and completely
understood there was a distinct possibility they would need to cast a new lead for the show.
"I don't know how much time I really have to work in front of the camera anymore,
so I could do a five, six year run of a show, really enjoy myself."
When that time came, Charlie Sheen was hired to replace Fox—as a different character,
Charlie Crawford—on the sitcom.
For the first two years of Spin City,
Fox kept mum about his diagnosis other than to those few friends and associates who needed
to know. During the show's third season, he went public about having Parkinson's.
The following season, he announced plans to exit the show as an actor. Fox stayed on as
executive producer and made guest appearances until the series went off the air in 2002.
Upon leaving Spin City, Fox has done quite a few voice-over roles in animated feature films like
the Stuart Little and Homeward Bound franchises. He has also been cast in several guest-starring
roles on television, even receiving a few Emmy nominations for Outstanding Guest Actor.
Parkinson's is serious business,
and Michael J. Fox has been willing to try whatever might work to reduce his symptoms.
"As I began to understand what research might promise for the future, I became hopeful that
I would not face the terrible suffering that so many with Parkinson's endure."
He had brain surgery in March 1998, the year he revealed his diagnosis to the world.
It was a thalamotomy to reduce tremors, and the surgery was performed while he was
awake and interacting with the doctor. The actor told People:
"They did something once that slurred my speech,
and I thought, 'Oh, man, you're messing with my brain. It's freaking me out.'"
But the procedure wound up successfully reducing Fox's tremors.
More recently, Fox had spinal surgery to remove a benign spinal cord tumor,
unrelated to Parkinson's, that was interfering with his ability to feel
and move his legs. He began falling and couldn't discern what was caused
by Parkinson's and what was due to the tumor. As he explained to People:
"I was heading for paralysis if I didn't get it operated on."
After his April 2018 spinal surgery, Fox followed a tough path toward healing.
Unable to walk, with medical aides alongside him
24 hours a day, he started to lose the optimism for which he is famous.
"I found myself really questioning this lifelong dedication to optimism."
Then, while still recovering from surgery,
Fox suffered a fall in his kitchen. He fractured his arm, requiring 19 pins and a plate to heal.
"I had to get the phone and make it — and that was all complicated — and made a call and got
an ambulance on its way. And I sat under the phone on the floor waiting for the ambulance."
When speaking with Denis Leary at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2018,
Fox admitted his outlook became bleak, saying:
"I was the guy who made lemonade out of lemons but I was
out of the (expletive) lemonade business. I couldn't do that."
Even now, more than two years later and after intense physical therapy, he doesn't have the
movement he did before his spinal tumor appeared. Fox told The New York Times:
"I envy 90-year-old men with canes who can move
briskly. I'll think, That son of a b---- can move!"
In November 2020, he revealed to People that writing has become his main outlet,
and he's fine with that because he likes doing it.
"When you have gratitude, optimism is sustainable, because you keep coming back through gratitude."
When The New York Times calls you "the most credible voice
on Parkinson's research in the world," you know you're doing something right. Indeed,
Michael J. Fox is determined to help others avoid the suffering
he has endured, and he remains hopeful that a cure for Parkinson's will be discovered.
"I wish I wasn't in this situation, but it's been one of the great gifts in my life that I've been
in the position to... try to find an answer."
An avid proponent of stem-cell research, he doesn't mind getting political when necessary in
the name of medical analysis. He testified before Congress to help secure funding for exploration
of the disease, and he has gone so far as to endorse candidates who strongly support stem-cell
research, and appeared in a 2006 campaign spot for Claire McCaskill. As The Washington Post noted,
Fox's body movements in the commercial caused many right-leaning pundits like Rush
Limbaugh to accuse Fox of faking his symptoms. Fox told ABC News
that he anticipated the ad would get a response, but didn't expect that take.
His commitment to Parkinson's research is inspiring, and he started an organization,
The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson's Research, to pursue education and research on
the disease. The organization is conducting a landmark study of biological markers
linked to Parkinson's, and his charitable work in this regard led him to the title of
one of TIME's 100 People "whose power, talent or moral example is transforming the world" in 2007.
In No Time Like the Future, Michael J. Fox shares he is planning a second,
and perhaps final, retirement from acting due to health issues. Beyond the physical
toll Parkinson's has taken on his body, he also revealed to People that his, quote,
"short-term memory is shot." Because of this, he has trouble memorizing lines.
That same month, he showed up in a Lil Nas X video warning Nas not to visit
2020 while traveling through time… a primo intersection of generations of pop culture!
He also released his fourth memoir, the aforementioned No Time Like the Future:
An Optimist Considers Mortality, in November 2020. In it, he writes:
"In fairness to myself and to producers, directors, editors, and poor beleaguered
script supervisors, not to mention actors who enjoy a little pace, I enter a second retirement.
That could change, because everything changes. But if this is the end of my acting career, so be it."
Fox might be down, but we wouldn't count him out just yet. As The Hollywood Reporter noted,
when Family Ties producer Brandon Tartikoff said Fox was too short and didn't have the
kind of face that would go on a lunch-box, that remark came back to bite him. After
the success of Back to the Future, Fox sent Tartikoff a note that read:
"Brandon, They wanted me to put a crow in here, but... Love and Kisses, Michael J."
The note was accompanied by a lunch-box with Fox's likeness on it.
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