How Michael J Fox’s devastating Parkinson’s diagnosis saved him from booze & ‘sheltered existence fuelled by fear’
IT was a moment that had fans in tears – as ailing movie star Michael J Fox was brought on to the Pyramid Stage during Coldplay’s headlining Glastonbury set and Chris Martin paid a moving tribute to his “hero”.
After the singer introduced him by referencing his “Chuck Berry riff” in the classic movie Back To The Future, the actor — now in a wheelchair after 33 years with Parkinson’s disease — joined the band to play guitar to their 2005 hit Fix You.
And the crowd went wild as Chris declared that the 1985 film had been an inspiration, saying: “The main reason we’re in a band is because of watching Back To The Future.
“So thank you to our hero for ever and one of the most amazing people on Earth, Mr Michael J Fox.”
It was a fitting tribute to the star, who was an idol to film lovers before becoming something of a hero to health campaigners after his shock diagnosis with the debilitating disease when he was just 29.
Amazingly, ten years after his 1991 diagnosis, when asked how he would react if offered his old life back, he said: “I would, without a moment’s hesitation, tell you to take a hike.”
Now 63, Michael claims he has only found happiness after he was struck down by the degenerative condition.
Before it, he said, life in Hollywood’s rat race had been “a narrow, sheltered existence fuelled by fear”.
But after coming to terms with his illness, he ditched his obsession with status and threw himself into raising money for research into Parkinson’s and ending the stigma around it.
So far, The Michael J Fox Foundation has funded more than £1.2billion of projects, which have developed new treatments and ways to diagnose the disease far earlier.
“It just became my whole purpose,” he said in February. “Parkinson’s has been by far the most exciting thing, much more than my career.”
But in four best-selling memoirs and on screen, he also detailed the disease’s terrible toll, as his antics as Back To The Future skateboarder Marty McFly were replaced by uncontrollable shaking and falls.
With the trademark wit that first made him famous in Eighties sitcom Family Ties, he said of the disease: “It’s a gift that keeps on taking — but it is a gift.”
Born in Edmonton, Canada in 1961, he was christened Michael Andrew Fox and adopted the “J” after moving to Los Angeles and discovering another actor with the same name.
He has often joked that the initial simply stands for “Jenius”.
He grew up on a series of military bases because his father was in the army, and his short stature made him hyper-competitive from the start.
By five, he was being mistaken for his two-year-old sister’s twin, but he proved himself in games and sports, declaring: “If you pick me last, I will do everything I can to make you look like a fool.”
His short stature — he is 5ft 4in — led to his first big break aged 16, when his school drama teacher urged him to audition for the role of a 12-year-old boy in new Canadian sitcom Leo And Me, and he got the job.
‘Really desperate’
At 18 he moved to Los Angeles and initially did well, landing small roles in shows such as newspaper drama Lou Grant, before work dried up.
By early 1982 he was so broke he was reduced to selling his sectional sofa bit by bit, and recalled: “It got really desperate.”
Then he auditioned for new sitcom Family Ties, after Matthew Broderick, the producers’ first choice as the family’s Wall Street Journal-reading teenage son, had turned them down.
Michael got the part, and from the first episode, the sheer zest that the 21-year-old brought to the role of Alex P Keaton made him the show’s stand-out star.
His light touch and quickness made him an instant favourite with actor Michael Gross, who played Alex’s father Steven, who recalled of the young actor’s screen charisma: “You just said, ‘Oh, this is a phenomenon’.”
Soon a third of all US households were watching the series, and it was a huge hit in the UK on Channel 4.
Parkinson’s has made me a better person. A better husband, father and overall human being
Michael J Fox
Michael’s success led to Steven Spielberg offering him the Marty McFly role in Back To The Future.
It was an instant classic, still loved today, and Marty in his red gilet became one of the most recognisable movie characters ever.
As Michael noted at the time: “I really have been lucky.”
He was also getting cocky. Returning to the Family Ties set for the first series after his movies had made him a superstar, he later told how he could get away with “the most outrageous behaviour”.
He was finally called out after making a sneering remark about the breath of guest star Tracy Pollan, who was playing Alex’s girlfriend.
She told him: “That was mean and rude, and you are a complete and total f***ing a**hole.”
He later wrote in his 2002 memoir Lucky Man: “I was smitten.”
They married in 1988 and have since become one of Hollywood’s most celebrated, long-lasting couples.
But Michael was so focused on cashing in on his soaring success that he took Tracy for granted, even after the birth of their son Sam in 1989.
He admitted in 2023: “I was off doing movies and she was home with a baby, and I made jokes about it on talk shows.”
He bought sports cars, obsessed about box office statistics and signed a $5million (£4million) deal to make Diet Pepsi adverts.
But he was also drinking heavily to deal with the pressure he felt to keep his career soaring.
Life delivered me a catastrophe, but I found a richness of soul
Michael J Fox
It only worsened after the end of Family Ties in 1989 and the final instalment of Back To The Future the following year.
Michael threw himself into second-rate movies such as The Hard Way, later writing: “I just didn’t feel comfortable finishing any job without a contract for another in hand.”
In November 1990 the 29-year-old actor was making the film Doc Hollywood when he noticed a tremor in his left little finger.
But it was the following September before doctors diagnosed the incurable, degenerative “old person’s” condition Parkinson’s.
Michael recalled in 2020: “I thought they were crazy. I was indignant. I was like, ‘No, you made a mistake’ — not only because I was young, but because my life had been so charmed to that point.
“I thought, ‘This has to be some kind of error’.”
He reacted by telling only his closest family and friends, and threw himself into ever-dodgier films to make money while he still could.
His drinking worsened until one day his toddler son Sam found him passed out on the floor, which began his turnaround.
He recalled: “The only unavailable choice was whether or not to have Parkinson’s. Everything else was up to me.”
And so he made the choice of acceptance, and focused on his family.
He and Tracy had twin daughters Aquinnah and Schuyler in 1995, followed by Esmé in 2001.
In 1996, to spend more time with his young family, he stopped chasing big-screen money and went back to TV, with hit sitcom Spin City.
It makes me think, ‘Can I just keep going in this adventure? Because if the worst I’ve had is as bad as it gets, it’s been amazing
Michael J Fox
For a couple of years he disguised his symptoms on set by being in constant motion, twiddling pens or picking up mugs, and by leaning against any surface he could find.
But by the end of 1998 he realised the anxiety about being “found out” had taken over his life, so he announced the truth, sparking shocked headlines around the world.
But one health campaigner later told Michael he had had a different reaction: “Thank God.”
At the time, Parkinson’s attracted little interest among health profess-ionals and only got a sliver of the research funding of other conditions.
And the fact that ten per cent of sufferers are under 50 was almost entirely unknown.
Michael has changed that, most spectacularly by starting the health foundation in his name that has now funded game-changing research for decades.
When he left Spin City in 2000 he feared he could no longer work because of worsening symptoms — but he soon discovered otherwise.
In 2006 TV drama Boston Legal, his physical weakness allowed him to movingly play a businessman dying of cancer, then in The Good Wife his increasingly “frozen” face gave his character Louis a haunting quality.
And most famously, in Curb Your Enthusiasm in 2011, he played himself weaponising his shakes and tics to drive Larry David crazy.
Michael’s health began to fail more rapidly in 2018, after an operation on his spine followed by a bad fall that reversed six months of painful rehab.
But, as his moving appearance on the Glastonbury stage proved, he is still determined to grab those special life moments when the chance arises.
In 2019 he said: “Parkinson’s has made me a better person. A better husband, father and overall human being.
“Life delivered me a catastrophe, but I found a richness of soul.”
He added: “It makes me think, ‘Can I just keep going in this adventure? Because if the worst I’ve had is as bad as it gets, it’s been amazing.”