Michael J. Fox after 31 years of Parkinson’s

The superstar Michael J. Fox (61) has lived with Parkinson’s for 31 years. Now the disease is really starting to put limits on his everyday life.

When he was about to attend a boxing match in Las Vegas, he couldn’t go there himself. He had to be taken both into the stadium and out again.

The superstar has used a wheelchair in the past on long journeys, but this is the first time he has allowed himself to be photographed inside in a completely everyday situation.

– I have a wheelchair that I have to use every now and then, and it’s tough, he recently told CBS Mornings.

He has also talked about the wheelchair in the past.

– It can be a frustrating and isolating experience to let someone else decide which direction I should go and how fast I can travel. She elaborated in an interview with The Irish Times in 2020.

Fight for life

It was in 1991 that life changed for the then 29-year-old Michael J. Fox. After the “Back to the Future” trilogy, the world was at his feet and he was about to shoot his twelfth film – “Doc Hollywood”.

Hit by a strong backlash

But what no one knew was that Fox was at the start of the toughest fight of his life. He had just learned that the small twitches on his little finger were signs of Parkinson’s disease.

Three years earlier he had married actress Tracy Pollan (62) and the couple thought the future was bright.

Sick leave was therefore very difficult to obtain.

We weren’t married long when she had this in her womb. But when I told him, the last time we cried for the diagnosis was together. We haven’t cried for Parkinson’s since. We just went through it and moved on with our lives, “Fox told” CBS Mornings. “

The couple did not know what a Parkinson’s diagnosis meant.

– We knew nothing of what awaited us. No one could tell when I would have more severe symptoms. At first it was just a small twitch in the little finger. But the doctors said it was coming, Fox says.

They told him that at most he could work as an actor for another ten years, but then his career would end.

– We’ve already lost it several times

Devastating

It would take seven years for the superstar to speak to the world of diagnosis. She did it at the same time she stopped acting, because the symptoms had become too difficult to deal with.

But he later managed to return to his work, several times. In “Designated Survivor” in 2018, he played a lawyer with Parkinson’s.

– Not being able to speak very well is devastating for an actor. Also, I have a hard time remembering lines. There is a time for everything, and the time of long working days is behind me, he wrote in his autobiography “No Time Like the Future”, published in 2020.

Parkinson’s is a brain disease that gradually destroys the ability to control one’s movements. And although scientists have made great strides when it comes to treatment, there is no cure.

Michael himself helped fund a lot of research on the disease. Last year, the Michael J. Fox Foundation celebrated having raised over NOK 10 billion over the years.

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