Michael J. Fox

Michael Andrew Fox OC (born June 9, 1961), known professionally as Michael J. Fox, is a Canadian-American retired actor, author, film producer, television director, and activist. Beginning his career in the 1970s, he first rose to prominence for portraying Alex P. Keaton on the NBC sitcom Family Ties (1982–1989). Fox achieved further recognition as protagonist Marty McFly in the Back to the Future film trilogy (1985–1990). The trilogy's critical and commercial success led to Fox headlining several films throughout the 1980s and 1990s, including The Secret of My Success (1987), Casualties of War (1989), and The Frighteners (1996). He returned to television on the ABC sitcom Spin City, where he portrayed the lead role of Mike Flaherty from 1996 to 2000.

In 1998, Fox publicly disclosed that he had been diagnosed with Parkinson's disease seven years earlier. Fox subsequently became an advocate for finding a cure and founded the Michael J. Fox Foundation in 2000 to help fund research. Although the disease's worsening symptoms forced Fox to have a less active career, he continued to make guest appearances on television, including recurring roles on the FX comedy-drama Rescue Me (2009) and the CBS legal drama The Good Wife (2010–2016) that garnered him critical acclaim. He also worked in voice-over, voicing the title character in the Stuart Little films (1999–2005) and the lead of the animated film Atlantis: The Lost Empire (2001). His final major role was on the NBC sitcom The Michael J. Fox Show (2013–2014). Fox retired from acting in 2020 due to his declining health.

During his career, Fox won five Primetime Emmy Awards, four Golden Globe Awards, two Screen Actors Guild Awards, and a Grammy Award. He was also appointed an Officer of the Order of Canada in 2010, along with being inducted to Canada's Walk of Fame in 2000 and the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2002. For his work advocating a cure for Parkinson's disease, he received an honorary doctorate in 2010 from the Karolinska Institute.

Early life

Michael Andrew Fox was born in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada on June 9, 1961, the son of Phyllis (née Piper), an actress and payroll clerk, and William Fox, a police officer and Canadian Forces member. He is of Irish, English, and Scottish descent. His family lived in various cities and towns across Canada because of his father's career. They finally moved to Burnaby, a large suburb of Vancouver, British Columbia, when his father retired in 1971. His father died of a heart attack on January 6, 1990. Fox attended Burnaby Central Secondary School, and now has a theatre named for him at Burnaby South Secondary. At age 15, Fox starred in the Canadian television series Leo and Me, produced by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, and in 1979, at age 18, he moved to Los Angeles to further his acting career. Shortly after his marriage, he moved back to Vancouver.

Fox was discovered by producer Ronald Shedlo and made his American television debut in the television film Letters from Frank, credited under the name "Michael Fox". He intended to continue to use the name, but when he registered with the Screen Actors Guild, which requires unique registration names to avoid credit ambiguities (and the possibility that royalty checks would be sent to the wrong actors), he discovered that Michael Fox, a veteran character actor, was already registered under the name. As he explained in his autobiography Lucky Man: A Memoir and in interviews, he needed to come up with a different name. He did not like the sound of "Michael A. Fox" during a time when "fox" meant "attractive" and because his "A" sounded too much like the Canadian "eh?" Fox also disliked the sound of "Andrew" or "Andy", so he decided to use a different middle initial and settled on "J", as a tribute to actor Michael J. Pollard.

Acting career

Early career

Fox's first feature film roles were Midnight Madness (1980) and Class of 1984 (1982), credited in both as Michael Fox. Shortly afterward, he began playing "Young Republican" Alex P. Keaton in the show Family Ties, which aired on NBC for seven seasons from 1982 to 1989. In an interview with Jimmy Fallon in April 2014, Fox stated he negotiated the role at a payphone at Pioneer Chicken. He received the role only after Matthew Broderick was unavailable. Family Ties had been sold to the television network using the pitch "Hip parents, square kids", with the parents originally intended to be the main characters. However, the positive reaction to Fox's performance led to his character becoming the focus of the show following the fourth episode. At its peak, the audience for Family Ties drew one-third of America's households every week. Fox won three Emmy awards for Family Ties in 1986, 1987, and 1988. He won a Golden Globe Award in 1989.

Brandon Tartikoff, one of the show's producers, felt that Fox was too short in relation to the actors playing his parents, and tried to have him replaced. Tartikoff reportedly said that "this is not the kind of face you'll ever find on a lunchbox." After his later successes, Fox presented Tartikoff with a custom-made lunchbox with the inscription "To Brandon: This is for you to put your crow in. Love and Kisses, Michael J." Tartikoff kept the lunchbox in his office for the rest of his NBC career.

When Fox left the television series Spin City in 2000, his final episodes made numerous allusions to Family Ties: Michael Gross (who played Alex's father Steven) portrays Mike Flaherty's (Fox's character's) therapist, and there is a reference to an off-screen character named "Mallory". Also, when Flaherty becomes an environmental lobbyist in Washington, D.C., he meets a conservative senator from Ohio named Alex P. Keaton, and in one episode Meredith Baxter played Mike's mother.

As a result of working on Family Ties, as well as his acting in Teen Wolf and Back to the Future, Fox became a teen idol. The VH1 television series The Greatest later named him among their "50 Greatest Teen Idols".

Film career

In January 1985, Fox was cast to replace Eric Stoltz as Marty McFly, a teenager who is accidentally sent back in time from 1985 to 1955 in Back to the Future. Director Robert Zemeckis originally wanted Fox to play Marty, but Gary David Goldberg the creator of Family Ties, which Fox was working on at the time, refused to allow Zemeckis even to approach Fox as he felt that as Meredith Baxter was on maternity leave at the time, Fox's character Alex Keaton was needed to carry the show in her absence. Stoltz was cast and was already filming Back to the Future, but Zemeckis felt that Stoltz was not giving the right type of performance for the humor involved. Zemeckis quickly replaced Stoltz with Fox, whose schedule was now more open with the return of Baxter. He was considered for the role of Mark Kendall in Once Bitten, but it eventually went to Jim Carrey. During filming, Fox rehearsed for Family Ties from 10 a.m to 6 p.m, then rushed to the Back to the Future set where he would rehearse and shoot until 2:30 a.m. This schedule lasted for two full months. Back to the Future was both a commercial and critical success. The film spent 8 consecutive weekends as the number-one grossing movie at the US box office in 1985, and eventually earned a worldwide total of $381.11 million. Variety applauded the performances, opining that Fox and his co-star Christopher Lloyd imbued Marty and Doc Brown's friendship with a quality reminiscent of King Arthur and Merlin. The film was followed by two successful sequels, Back to the Future Part II (1989) and Back to the Future Part III (1990).

During and immediately after the Back to the Future trilogy, Fox starred in Teen Wolf (1985), Light of Day (1987), The Secret of My Success (1987), Bright Lights, Big City (1988), and Casualties of War (1989).

In The Secret of My Success, Fox played a recent graduate from Kansas State University who moves to New York City, where he has to deal with the ups and downs of the business world. The film was successful at the box office, grossing $110 million worldwide. Roger Ebert in The Chicago Sun Times wrote; "Fox provides a fairly desperate center for the film. It could not have been much fun for him to follow the movie's arbitrary shifts of mood, from sitcom to slapstick, from sex farce to boardroom brawls."

In Bright Lights, Big City, Fox played a fact-checker for a New York magazine, who spends his nights partying with alcohol and drugs. The film received mixed reviews, with Hal Hinson in The Washington Post criticizing Fox by claiming that "he was the wrong actor for the job". Meanwhile, Roger Ebert praised the actor's performance: "Fox is very good in the central role (he has a long drunken monologue that is the best thing he has ever done in a movie)". During the shooting of Bright Lights, Big City, Fox co-starred again with Tracy Pollan, his on-screen girlfriend from Family Ties.

Fox then starred in Casualties of War, a dark and violent war drama about the Vietnam War, alongside Sean Penn. Casualties of War was not a major box office hit, but Fox, playing a private serving in Vietnam, was praised for his performance. Don Willmott wrote: "Fox, only one year beyond his Family Ties sitcom silliness, rises to the challenges of acting as the film's moral voice and sharing scenes with the always intimidating Penn."

In 1991, he starred in Doc Hollywood, a romantic comedy about a talented medical doctor who decides to become a plastic surgeon. While moving from Washington, D.C. to Los Angeles, he winds up as a doctor in a small southern town in South Carolina. Michael Caton-Jones, from Time Out, described Fox in the film as "at his frenetic best". The Hard Way was also released in 1991, with Fox playing an undercover actor learning from police officer James Woods. After being privately diagnosed with Parkinson's disease in 1991 and being cautioned he had "ten good working years left", Fox hastily signed a three-film contract, appearing in For Love or Money (1993), Life With Mikey (1993), and Greedy (1994). The mid-1990s saw Fox play smaller supporting roles in The American President (1995) and Mars Attacks! (1996).

His last major film role was in The Frighteners (1996), directed by Peter Jackson. The Frighteners tells the story of Frank Bannister (Fox), an architect who develops psychic abilities allowing him to see, hear, and communicate with ghosts. After losing his wife, he uses his new abilities by cheating customers out of money for his "ghost hunting" business. However, a mass murderer comes back from Hell, prompting Frank to investigate the supernatural presence. Fox's performance received critical praise, Kenneth Turan in the Los Angeles Times wrote; "The film's actors are equally pleasing. Both Fox, in his most successful starring role in some time, and [Trini] Alvarado, who looks rather like Andie MacDowell here, have no difficulty getting into the manic spirit of things."

He voiced the American Bulldog Chance in Disney's live-action film Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey and its sequel Homeward Bound II: Lost in San Francisco, the titular character in Stuart Little and its two sequels Stuart Little 2 and Stuart Little 3: Call of the Wild, and Milo Thatch in Disney's animated film Atlantis: The Lost Empire.

Later career and his retirement

Spin City ran from 1996 to 2002 on American television network ABC. The show was based on a fictional local government running New York City, originally starring Fox as Mike Flaherty, a Fordham Law School graduate serving as the Deputy Mayor of New York. Fox won an Emmy award for Spin City in 2000, three Golden Globe Awards in 1998, 1999, and 2000, and two Screen Actors Guild Awards in 1999 and 2000. During the third season of Spin City, Fox made the announcement to the cast and crew of the show that he had Parkinson's disease. During the fourth season, he announced his retirement from the show. He announced that he planned to continue to act and would make guest appearances on Spin City (he made three more appearances on the show during the final season). After leaving the show, he was replaced by Charlie Sheen, who portrayed the character Charlie Crawford.

In 2004, Fox guest starred in two episodes of the comedy-drama Scrubs as Dr. Kevin Casey, a surgeon with severe obsessive-compulsive disorder. The series was created by Spin City creator Bill Lawrence. In 2006, he appeared in four episodes of Boston Legal as a lung cancer patient. The producers brought him back in a recurring role for season three, beginning with the season premiere. Fox was nominated for an Emmy Award for best guest appearance.

In 2009, Fox appeared in five episodes of the television series Rescue Me which earned him an Emmy for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Drama Series. Starting in 2010, Fox played a recurring role in the US drama The Good Wife as crafty attorney Louis Canning and earned Emmy nominations for three consecutive years. In 2011, Fox was featured as himself in the eighth season of the Larry David vehicle Curb Your Enthusiasm. David's character (also himself) becomes a temporary resident of the New York City apartment building that Fox resides in and a conflict arises between the two, whereby David believes that Fox is using his condition (Parkinson's disease) as a manipulative tool. Fox returned in 2017 for a brief appearance, referencing his prior time on the show.

On August 20, 2012, NBC announced The Michael J. Fox Show, loosely based on Fox's life. Fox starred in the show. It was granted a 22-episode commitment from the network and premiered on NBC on September 26, 2013. The show was taken off the air after 15 episodes and was later cancelled.

Fox has made several appearances in other media. At the 2010 Winter Olympics closing ceremony in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, he delivered comedy monologues, along with William Shatner and Catherine O'Hara, in the "I am Canadian" part of the show.

Despite a sound-alike, A.J. Locascio, voicing his character of Marty McFly in the 2011 Back to the Future episodic adventure game, Fox lent his likeness to the in-game version of Marty alongside Christopher Lloyd. Fox made a special guest appearance in the final episode of the series as an elder version of Marty, as well as his great-grandfather Willie McFly.

In 2018, Fox was cast in the recurring role of Ethan West on the second season of the ABC political drama Designated Survivor. Fox appeared in five episodes of the show. His character was described as "a Washington attorney with significant connections and a history of great success" who was hired to investigate whether the president of the United States was fit to continue in his position.

Fox's memoir, No Time Like the Future: An Optimist Considers Mortality, was released in November 2020. In the memoir, Fox stated that he was once again retiring from acting. He noted that "'not being able to speak reliably is a game-breaker for an actor'" and added that he was experiencing memory loss. Fox wrote: "'There is a time for everything, and my time of putting in a 12-hour workday, and memorizing seven pages of dialogue, is best behind me … I enter a second retirement. That could change, because everything changes. But if this is the end of my acting career, so be it.'"

Other work

Fox served as an executive producer of Spin City alongside co-creators Bill Lawrence and Gary David Goldberg.

Fox has authored four books: Lucky Man: A Memoir (2002), Always Looking Up: The Adventures of an Incurable Optimist (2009), A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Future: Twists and Turns and Lessons Learned (2010), and No Time Like the Future: An Optimist Considers Mortality (2020).

Personal life

Fox met his future wife, Tracy Pollan, when she played the role of his girlfriend, Ellen, on Family Ties. They were married on July 16, 1988, at West Mountain Inn in Arlington, Vermont. The couple have four children: son Sam Michael (born May 30, 1989), twin daughters Aquinnah Kathleen and Schuyler Frances (born February 15, 1995), and daughter Esmé Annabelle (born November 3, 2001). Fox holds dual Canadian-US citizenship. He provided a light-hearted segment during the 2010 Winter Olympics' closing ceremony in Vancouver, British Columbia on February 28, 2010, when he expressed how proud he is to be Canadian. On June 4, 2010, the city of Burnaby, British Columbia granted him the Freedom of the City. Fox and his family live primarily in Manhattan. The family owns a second home in Quogue, New York.

Parkinson's disease

Fox started displaying symptoms of early-onset Parkinson's disease in 1991 while shooting the movie Doc Hollywood, and was diagnosed shortly thereafter. Though his initial symptoms were only a twitching little finger and a sore shoulder, he was told he would not be able to work within a few years. The causes of Parkinson's disease are not well understood, and may include genetic and environmental factors. Fox is one of at least four members of the cast and crew of Leo and Me who developed early-onset Parkinson's. According to Fox, this is not enough people to be defined as a cluster so has not been well researched. He told Hadley Freeman of The Guardian in late 2020: "I can think of a thousand possible scenarios: I used to go fishing in a river near paper mills and eat the salmon I caught; I've been to a lot of farms; I smoked a lot of pot in high school when the government was poisoning the crops. But you can drive yourself crazy trying to figure it out."

After his diagnosis, Fox started drinking heavily and suffered from depression. He eventually sought help and stopped drinking altogether. In 1998, he went public about his Parkinson's disease, and has become a strong advocate of Parkinson's disease research. His foundation, The Michael J. Fox Foundation, was created to help advance every promising research path to curing Parkinson's disease. Since 2010, he has led a $100 million effort, which is the Foundation's landmark observational study, to discover the biological markers of Parkinson's disease with the Parkinson's Progression Markers Initiative (PPMI).

Fox manages the symptoms of his Parkinson's disease with the drug carbidopa/levodopa, and he had a thalamotomy in 1998.

His first book, Lucky Man, focused on how, after seven years of denial of the disease, he set up the Michael J. Fox Foundation, stopped drinking and became an advocate for people living with Parkinson's disease. In Lucky Man, Fox wrote that he did not take his medication prior to his testimony before the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee in 1999 (partial C-SPAN video clip).

I had made a deliberate choice to appear before the subcommittee without medication. It seemed to me that this occasion demanded that my testimony about the effects of the disease, and the urgency we as a community were feeling, be seen as well as heard. For people who had never observed me in this kind of shape, the transformation must have been startling.

— Michael J. Fox, Lucky Man

In an interview with NPR in April 2002, Fox explained what he does when he becomes symptomatic during an interview:

Well, actually, I've been erring on the side of caution—I think 'erring' is actually the right word—in that I've been medicating perhaps too much, in the sense [that] ... the symptoms ... people see in some of these interviews that [I] have been on are actually dyskinesia, which is a reaction to the medication. Because if I were purely symptomatic with Parkinson's symptoms, a lot of times speaking is difficult. There's a kind of a cluttering of speech and it's very difficult to sit still, to sit in one place. You know, the symptoms are different, so I'd rather kind of suffer the symptoms of dyskinesia ... this kind of weaving and this kind of continuous thing is much preferable, actually, than pure Parkinson's symptoms. So that's what I generally do ... I haven't had any, you know, problems with pure Parkinson's symptoms in any of these interviews, because I'll tend to just make sure that I have enough Sinemet in my system and, in some cases, too much. But to me, it's preferable. It's not representative of what I'm like in my everyday life. I get a lot of people with Parkinson's coming up to me saying, 'You take too much medication.' I say, 'Well, you sit across from Larry King and see if you want to tempt it.'

— Interview, April 30, 2002, Fresh Air, NPR

In 2006, Fox starred in a campaign ad for then-State Auditor of Missouri Claire McCaskill in her successful 2006 Senate campaign against incumbent Jim Talent, expressing her support for embryonic stem cell research. In the ad, he visibly showed the effects of his Parkinson's disease:

As you might know, I care deeply about stem cell research. In Missouri, you can elect Claire McCaskill, who shares my hope for cures. Unfortunately, Senator Jim Talent opposes expanding stem cell research. Senator Talent even wanted to criminalize the science that gives us the chance for hope. They say all politics is local, but that's not always the case. What you do in Missouri matters to millions of Americans, Americans like me.

— Michael J. Fox, Campaign Advertisement for Claire McCaskill

The New York Times called it "one of the most powerful and talked about political advertisements in years" and polls indicated that the commercial had a measurable impact on the way voters voted, in an election that McCaskill won. His second book, Always Looking Up: The Adventures of an Incurable Optimist, describes his life between 1999 and 2009, with much of the book centered on how Fox got into campaigning for stem-cell research. On March 31, 2009, Fox appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show with Mehmet Oz to discuss his condition as well as his book, his family and his primetime special, which aired May 7, 2009, (Michael J. Fox: Adventures of an Incurable Optimist).

His work led him to be named one of the 100 people "whose power, talent or moral example is transforming the world" in 2007 by Time magazine. On March 5, 2010, Fox received an honorary doctorate in medicine from Karolinska Institute for his contributions to research in Parkinson's disease. He received an honorary doctorate of laws from the University of British Columbia.

On May 31, 2012, he received an honorary degree of Doctor of Laws from the Justice Institute of British Columbia to recognize his accomplishments as a performer as well as his commitment to raising research funding and awareness for Parkinson's disease. Fox recalled performing in role-playing simulations as part of police recruit training exercises at the Institute early in his career.

In 2016, his organization the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson's Research created a raffle to raise awareness for Parkinson's disease and raised $6.75 million, with the help of Nike via two auctions, one in Hong Kong and the other in London.

Filmography

Film

Television

Video games

Web

Awards and nominations

Honors

• 2000: Honored by the Family Television Awards for Acting.
• 2000: Inducted into Canada's Walk of Fame, located in Toronto, Ontario, which acknowledges the achievements and accomplishments of successful Canadians.
• December 16, 2002: Received the 2209th Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in recognition of his contributions to the motion picture industry, presented to him by the Chamber of Commerce.
• 2005: Received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement.
• 2011: Honored with the Golden Camera Award for Lifetime Achievement – International.
• 2010: Appointed Officer of the Order of Canada – The Officer O.C. recognizes national service or achievement.
• 2010: Received the National Association of Broadcasters Distinguished Service Award.
• 2013: Honored with the Golden Apple Award by the Casting Society of America.
• 2021: Doctor of Fine Arts, honoris causa, from Simon Fraser University.

Accolades

Books

• Fox, Michael J. (2002). Lucky Man: A Memoir. New York: Hyperion. ISBN 978-0-7868-6764-6. michael j fox.
• Fox, Michael J. (2009). Always Looking Up: The Adventures of an Incurable Optimist. New York: Hyperion. ISBN 978-1-4013-0338-9. michael j fox.
• Fox, Michael J. (2010). A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Future: Twists and Turns and Lessons Learned. New York: Hyperion. ISBN 978-1-4013-2386-8. michael j fox.
• Fox, Michael J. (2020). No Time Like the Future: An Optimist Considers Mortality. New York: Flatiron Books. ISBN 978-1-2502-6561-6. michael j fox.