Michael J. Fox is an actor that has been loved by millions around the world for decades. He broke out on screens and into the hearts of the public in his iconic role as Marty McFly.
The actor has been dealing with some health issues in the last few years. He has always been open about his experiences and now he is talking about how Parkinson’s Disease affected his acting career.
Michael J. Fox was only 29 years old when he got a devastating diagnosis; he found out he had Parkinson’s Disease. He was at the peak of his acting career and knew he would not give up his craft because of his diagnosis.
Instead, he decided to use his diagnosis in his roles. In 2004, he played a doctor with obsessive-compulsive disorder on the show House. He also played a role in The Good Wife as Louis Canning, a lawyer who used his neurological condition to manipulate juries on his behalf.
But now as he turns 60 years old, the actor admits that it is getting harder and harder for him to act. He revealed that memorizing lines has become increasingly difficult for him to manage.
“When I did the spinoff from The Good Wife, which is The Good Fight, I couldn’t remember the lines. I just had this blank, I couldn’t remember the lines,” he recently said on the Working It Out podcast.
The aspect of memory loss from his disease has made it hard for him to work as an actor, he used to be able to memorize lines in an instant but now it has become almost impossible for him to do so.
He recalled days when memorizing lines had been second nature to the actor. He said, “I knew it, like in an instant, and it continued to be that way for me. I[’d] have 70 pages of dialogue on a [Brian] De Palma movie, and knowing that a hugely expensive Steadicam shot depends on me knowing the lines—not a trickle of sweat on my brow.”
He no longer takes roles that require too many lines to be memorized. He said, “I can’t remember five pages of dialogue. I can’t do it.” But he has taken this in stride, knowing there is not much he can do about it.
The actor revealed a few years ago that he started falling down for no reason. Though he knew his Parkinson’s may have been a contributing factor, the actor himself soon came to realize something unrelated was happening with his body.
Fox had endured recurring problems with his spinal cord, but was reassured by doctors that it wasn’t a life-threatening problem. That said, it was made it clear that it would affect his life if he didn’t do something about it.
As per the New York Times, he said: “I was told it was benign but if it stayed static I would have diminished feeling in my legs and difficulty moving. Then all of a sudden I started falling – a lot. It was getting ridiculous. I was trying to parse what was Parkinson’s and what was the spinal thing. But it came to the point where it was probably necessary to have surgery.”
Fox underwent surgery on his spinal cord a few years ago, then embarked on a period of intense physical therapy. Unfortunately, though, his problems didn’t end there.
“I did it all,” he said, “and eventually people asked me to do some acting. Last August I was supposed to go to work. I woke up, walked into the kitchen to get breakfast, misstepped and I went down. I fractured the hell out of my arm. I ended up getting 19 pins and a plate. It was such a blow.”
When quizzed on how he overcame said blow, he explained: “I don’t talk about things being ‘for a reason.’
“I do think the more unexpected something is, the more there is to learn from it. In my case, what was it that made me skip down the hallway to the kitchen thinking I was fine when I’d been in a wheelchair six months earlier? It’s because I had certain optimistic expectations of myself, and I’d had results to bear out those expectations, but I’d had failures too. And I hadn’t given the failures equal weight.”
He has been writing a lot since his diagnosis. He released his fourth memoir, No Time Like the Future. His foray into writing was simple, the actor said, “My guitar playing is no good. My sketching is no good anymore, my dancing never was good and acting is getting tougher to do. So it’s down to writing. Luckily, I really enjoy it.”
The actor has never let his disease get him down. He founded the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research, which has till now raised over $1 billion in an effort to find a cure!
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