Sad News About Michael J. Fox

More hit films followed—The Secret of My Success, The Hard Way, Casualties of War—and Fox married his Family Ties co-star Tracy Pollan. But in 1989, at just 29, he noticed a twitch in his finger. Doctors diagnosed him with Parkinson’s disease, warning him that his expected lifespan might be shortened.

Fox fell into drinking until Pollan confronted him about raising children with an alcoholic. He sobered up, built a career around Spin City, and in 1998 went public with his diagnosis. Two years later, he founded the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research, which has since poured billions into medical science.

No Glossing Over: Honesty and Humor

In the documentary Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie, Fox allowed cameras to capture his tremors, falls, and even flashes of humor in the middle of hardship. There was no sugarcoating, but no self-pity either. “Do I feel sad seeing myself young and athletic? No. Do I sometimes change the channel? Yes,” he says.

He admired Muhammad Ali, who shared the same illness, for carrying public attention lightly. Ali could rewatch old fights with pride, and Fox does the same with his acting. “People sometimes come up and say: ‘Thanks for my childhood.’ I can’t take credit for their childhood, but I understand the connection.”

Fox also laughs at himself. On Curb Your Enthusiasm, he played a fictionalized version of himself—sometimes exaggerating symptoms to irritate Larry David. For Fox, self-deprecation is a way to resist being boxed into pity.