Happy Birthday, Michael J. Fox, Actor and Parkinson’s Disease Advocate

Michael J. Fox was born to a Canadian military career officer in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada on June 9, 1961. Making his acting debut on Vancouver television at the age of 15, Fox moved to the United States in 1979 at the age of 18 and lived “the clichéd life of a starving actor,” he has said. He lived “in spartan conditions until he was able to get his green card,” according to his AllMovie biography. At a height of 5’4”, Fox was able to land young roles, but was also turned away from roles for being too short. At the age of 19, he earned a role on both the weekly show “Palmerstown, U.S.A.” and a supporting role in the film “Midnight Madness.”

Fox continued to live in relative squalor as he tried to make it as an actor. He “sold all his furniture” and was eating mostly macaroni and cheese around the time he won his breakthrough role as Alex P. Keaton on “Family Ties,” a sitcom that ran from 1982 to 1989. According to “Family Ties” creator Gary David Goldberg, before he landed the role, Fox would use a chicken restaurant as his “office,” buying chicken and making phone calls from the restaurant, which was where he first heard he’d landed the role on the sitcom.

Fox won three Emmys for his role, including one for “an unforgettable ‘one-man show’ in which his character soliloquized over the suicide of a close friend,” AllMovie reports. Watch a clip from the “Family Ties” DVD where Fox discusses the “best gig in the world” and Goldberg and others sound off about the show.

Fox made his mark on the big screen when he replaced actor Eric Stolz as the lead in “Back to the Future,” an “enormous hit” that had two sequels. He then went on to star in “The Secret of My Success” and “Casualties of War,” movies that expanded his range and demonstrated his comfort as a lead actor and as a comic actor. Fox was prolific as a film actor during the late 1980s and early 1990s, but returned to television as the star of the sitcom “Spin City” where he played the deputy mayor of New York City. “Spin City” was also created by Goldberg and lasted until 2002. View Fox's complete filmography on The New York Times site.

Fox was diagnosed with Parkinson’s, a degenerative disease that is so far incurable, at the age of 30. MedicineNet explains the symptoms of Parkinson’s and how it usually progresses. Fox noticed a “twitch” in one of his fingers back in 1991 when he was working on the film “Doc Hollywood,” according to MedicineNet. Symptoms include “tremors, stiffness of the limbs, a mask-like face, gait disturbance (difficulty walking), depression and, late in the disease, dementia.”

Nearly a decade after his diagnosis, Fox made the illness public knowledge in 1998 and left “Spin City” in 2000. He was open and encouraging about the condition and quickly got to work looking for a cure. He founded the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research, published his memoir, “Lucky Man,” and continues to spread optimism about the disease.

In a 2004 interview with BusinessWeek, Fox, a hard-working stem-cell activist, confronted skeptics about stem cell research and attempted to refashion the contentious “issue” as a “potential breakthrough.” But the actor and activist retains his sense of humor. “We don't want to create Frankenstein or clone our Uncle Charlie so we can play poker with him again.” While he thinks stem cells can help uncover a “genetic marker” for Parkinson’s, Fox also says that people “have to be open-minded and broaden our approach beyond stem cells.”

In an April interview with Larry King on CNN, Fox discussed his recent work with the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research and talked about his most recently published book, “Always Looking Up.” He was optimistic even about his public debate with Rush Limbaugh over Parkinson’s because, he said, Limbaugh helped bring the stem cell debate to a wider audience.

Fox is married to Tracy Pollan, who played his childhood sweetheart on “Family Ties.” The couple has four children and have been married since 1988, a year before “Family Ties” had its finale. Pollan is the sister of the author Michael Pollan who has written bestsellers such as “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” and “In Defense of Food.”