Michael J. Fox continues to inspire people across the globe with Parkinson’s disease, becoming a symbol of hope for everyone going through the same challenges of the health condition.

Fox is a beloved actor who’s been in the spotlight since the 1980s. Despite his tragic Parkinson’s disease diagnosis in the early ’90s, when he was only 29, Fox has had the support of his wife and fellow actress Tracy Pollan.

Born in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada in 1961, Fox took an interest in acting early on in his life, and after filming the Canadian sitcom “Leo and Me,” he headed off to Los Angeles in 1979 to make it big. Clearly, the folks in LA could see the potential in him, because before long he was cast as Alex P. Keaton in “Family Ties,” which ran from 1982–1989.

During his previous interviews, Fox had revealed that his 40-year acting career would be coming to a bittersweet end. The Emmy-award-winning Hollywood legend also revealed plans for retirement in his memoir as his Parkinson’s disease continues to progress.

“The nascent diminishment in my ability to download words and repeat them verbatim is just the latest ripple in the pond,” Fox wrote in his memoir, according to TODAY. “There are reasons for my lapses in memorization — be they age, cognitive issues with the disease, distraction from the constant sensations of Parkinson’s, or lack of sensation because of the spine — but I read it as a message, an indicator.”

The “Back To The Future” actor has endured a lot throughout his life, and he has been open about his battle with Parkinson’s disease for the last 30 years. In an interview with CBS Mornings, Fox admits that living with such a debilitating disease has grown harder as the years go by.

Michael J. Fox (1988), (Kypros/Hulton Archive via Getty Images)

In an interview with Entertainment Tonight, Fox said he feels humbled to start a game-changing opportunity to help find a cure for Parkinson’s.

“For so long, the patients were the neglected part of the process and it happens in all kinds of disease studies and disease research, that they tend to hurry past the patient to try to find the answer,” he said.

In an interview with NPR, he also recalled what he felt following his diagnosis.

“It was shocking when I was diagnosed. I was diagnosed completely out of the blue, unexpectedly,” he said.

Then again, he knew he had his wife’s back the moment he told her about his condition.

“And I had made my way shellshocked back to the apartment and met Tracy and told her, admittedly somewhat tearfully, this had been pronounced. And she didn’t blink. I could tell right away she was with me, and she was with me through whatever happened,” he said.

Over the years, Fox has continued to dismiss the stigma that comes with Parkinson’s disease, saying it’s more than what people can see on the outside.

“People often think of Parkinson’s as a visual thing, but the visuals of it are nothing. On any given day, my hands could be barely shaking or they could be,” he told AARP in an interview in 2021. “It’s what you can’t see — the lack of an inner gyroscope, of a sense of balance, of peripheral perception. I mean, I’m sailing a ship on stormy seas on the brightest of days,” he added.

Michael J. Fox (2015), (Uri Schanker/GC Images via Getty Images)

In an interview with People Magazine in October 2022, he admitted it worsened over the previous two years. Fox went on to share how the situations he had been in recently – including injuries – affected his happy attitude.

“I was never really a cranky guy, but I got very cranky and short with people,” he said. “I try to nip it in the bud. I always think of these aides who work with me. And I often say to them, ‘Whatever I say, just imagine I said “please” at the beginning and “thank you” at the end. Just take a second and absorb that I might have said that if I was more myself, but I didn’t, so I apologize.’”

Fox also elaborated on his grueling journey in the Apple TV+ documentary “Still,” released in May 2023. According to reports, Fox revealed in the film that he is in “intense pain” as “each tremor is like a seismic jolt.”

Fox also told The Los Angeles Times that the pain was not caused by the movement but the lack thereof.

“It’s when you freeze, and in that freezing that not-movement becomes infused with all this energy and it becomes this burning, impending thing that never happens,” he added. “I don’t want to get the violins out. I’ve broken my hand, my elbow, my humerus, my other humerus, my shoulder, my face and some other s— too. And all that stuff is amplified by the electricity of the tremors. So, yes, it hurts a lot. But what you learn is that nobody gives a s—. It’s just life. It doesn’t matter. You suck it up and you move on.”

Tracy Pollan, Michael J. Fox and daughter (2023), (Slaven Vlasic/Getty Images Entertainment via Getty Images)

At 62, Fox has since considered himself an optimist amid his condition. He told CBS News in 2021 that he relied on optimism and gratitude. He even titled his memoir: “No Time Like the Future: An Optimist Considers Mortality.” Fox is also the face of the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s research.

“And I really felt I just felt so much weight of that public persona being Mr. Optimist. And I still am Mr. Optimist. And I knew and in some small way, I knew in that moment, as dark as it was, that I would get back to that at some point,” he told the outlet.

However, things aren’t always sunny for Fox. In April 2023, Fox spoke to CBS Sunday Morning anchor Jane Pauley to admit that the battle for the incurable disease is getting more difficult.

“I’m not gonna lie. It’s gettin’ hard, it’s gettin’ harder. It’s gettin’ tougher,” Fox admitted. “Every day it’s tougher. But, but, that’s, that’s the way it is. I mean, you know, who do I see about that?”

In 2018, doctors found a noncancerous tumor in Fox’s spine, and he explained to People Magazine that he was on the cusp of paralysis if he didn’t get it operated on. He recalled this grim moment in the 2023 interview as he heartbreakingly opened up about the potential of not living into older age.

“(I) broke this arm, and I broke this arm, I broke this elbow. I broke my face. I broke my hand,” Fox furthered. “You don’t die from Parkinson’s. You die with Parkinson’s. I’ve been thinking about the mortality of it. … I’m not gonna be 80. I’m not gonna be 80.

Michael J. Fox (2019), (Nicholas Hunt/Getty Images Entertainment via Getty Images for Tribeca Film Festival)

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