Fox was diagnosed with Parkinson’s in 1991 and launched a charitable foundation to find a cure.
Michael J Fox is on a mission to find a cure for Parkinson’s disease(Image: FilmMagic)
Michael J Fox says returning to acting has “prolonged” his life but admitted one day illness will force him to stop for good.
Back To The Future star Fox, who was diagnosed with Parkinson’s in 1991, quit acting around the time of the Covid lockdown when he worried his about his inability to rely on his speech from day to day.
But after a six year break, he has returned to appear in Apple TV comedy Shrinking and has been nominated for an Emmy for his work on the third season. A fourth series is on the way and he will once again take a lead role.
Fox, 65, said of acting: “It’s really prolonged my life and made my life interesting in a way that I didn’t think it would be to this point
“I’m not retired from acting, but if I didn’t act again, it would be for a very good reason. I let Parkinson’s make decisions for me.”
In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Fox also revealed how he worried about his decision to go public and disclose his diagnosis. So much so, that around that time in the late Nineties, he went online and would join Parkinson’s chatrooms anonymously to see how others reacted to him living with the disease.
Fox says he was shocked, but happy, to see the reaction was positive.
He joked: “I thought, ‘Well, fuck you! I have Parkinson’s and you’re celebrating’.”
More seriously, he added: “I got it. People back then would never in a million years tell you they had Parkinson’s.”
Fox became the face of the disease in America and the fight to find a cure. More than 10 million people worldwide are estimated to now be living with Parkinson’s, including around 1.1 million Americans.
He says his campaigning and decision to go public with his illness was tough on his wife Tracey but completely necessary.
He added: “I said to her, ‘I have to go all the way here. No half measures.’ I started to understand what it was like for these people who didn’t have the options or the choices I had, didn’t have the connections and the reason to be optimistic. … I needed to normalise it and just be that all the time. I said, ‘I have to not hide this. F*** vanity.’
Fox says he still believes a cure will be found during his lifetime and his company The Michael J. Fox Foundation is seen as one of the most successful disease-focused nonprofit busness of the century, funding more than $3 billion in research around tackling the disease.
He concluded: “We have to find a way to get through every day, and if we can find a way to get through every day and at the same time be fueling for our actions and our deeds and our philanthropy, then that’s a great thing.
“It’s individually elevating lives. So it’s not just the money, it’s not just the science — it’s the humanity.”
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