SEPTEMBER 25, 2013
When I was growing up, I assumed there was order to existence and that life wasn’t purely random. I thought if I did everything right—if I was a good boy, listened to my parents, ate my vegetables, prayed to the Lord above—things were guaranteed to turn out well. I carried this magical thinking into adulthood. Sadly, this type of outlook left me unprepared with how to deal with adversity. When bad things happened to me, it didn’t compute. When life kicked me in the teeth, I didn’t know how to cope.
Probably that’s why I developed such intense obsessive-compulsive disorder. I couldn’t accept the chaos of life. I needed to feel like I had some measure of control. If I only touched a doorknob so many times then things would be okay. So often I’d think, “This isn’t the way my life is supposed to go.” What I learned after years of therapy is that there is no such thing as “supposed to” in life. We are not entitled to a pain-free existence.
Michael J. Fox’s story is proof that it doesn’t matter who you are, life can go haywire. He has one of the most remarkable success stories in the entertainment business: a Canadian kid who drops out of school, heads to LA to become an actor, and winds up one of the biggest stars of his generation. He effortlessly moved between television and film three decades before it was an acceptable trend in Hollywood. He racked up all kinds of awards. He was on top of the world. Then wham—he got diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease.
Before Michael came into the studio that day, I assumed that he had it all together—that he was this poster boy for positivity, this relentless optimist who had quickly accepted his fate and chose to make lemonade out of lemons. The reality, as Michael explains here, is much more complicated. He doesn’t sugarcoat things. He initially struggled to deal with his diagnosis, turning to alcohol and as a result nearly losing his wife, Tracy. In describing the terror of his illness, he uses the analogy of being stuck in the middle of the road with cement feet as a speeding bus approaches.
But he persevered. That’s the lesson here. No matter what happens to you in life, the important thing is that you find a way to move forward. It may not be a straight path. Like Michael, you might make some mistakes. That’s okay. You keep trying. Michael makes it clear that’s not always easy. Having a glass-half-full outlook doesn’t come naturally. He works hard at it. It’s a choice he makes every day. He’s even managed to keep a dark sense of humor as he talks about the benefits of masturbating with Parkinson’s.
This interview shows Michael J. Fox in a way I had never seen him before. Our society has propped him up as this beacon of inspiration. He’s become a kind of superhero. Really, though, he’s just a regular guy doing his best to get through each day. He is so relatable, which makes him even more inspiring.
I’ve wondered: If the same thing happened to me, could I be as graceful and accepting? I don’t think so. Whenever you’re feeling like life is too much to handle, just open up this book and turn to this interview.
Howard: I would imagine most people don’t even know how to react when they’re in the room with you. Do people start acting like, “I’m so sorry. I’m so sad”?
Michael: People who don’t know me do. But people that know me know I’m pathetic for a million other reasons.
Howard: People should’ve been sorry before you got Parkinson’s.
Michael: Yeah, they really should have been.
Howard: You dropped out of school when you were in the eleventh grade. That’s sort of badass to do something like that.
Michael: My father was really cool. He was a military guy and he was in the police department for a while. He was a no-nonsense guy. He was a no-BS guy. He thought acting in show business was really for weirdos and fairies. When I went to him and I said, “I want to drop out of school, and move to the States, and be an actor,” he really surprised me. He just looked at me and said, “Well, if you want to be a lumberjack, go to the goddamn forest.” He drove me down.
Howard: I thought you were from a showbiz family, because it seemed to me you came on the scene really young.
Michael: When we started Family Ties, I was twenty, but I’d moved down to the States [from Canada] at eighteen and I’d gone through three years of the kind of requisite eating plain macaroni and ducking the landlord and all that stuff.
Howard: When you got the job on Family Ties, it was nothing short of a miracle, right? Because Brandon Tartikoff, who was the head of NBC, said he didn’t want you. You were too short. You didn’t look right. This is what I heard—that you didn’t look right with the cast.
Michael: His line was to Gary Goldberg, who produced it. Gary was defending me after hating me. Gary hated me at first. Then I got back in with him, and he became my champion. He wanted Matthew Broderick, and Matthew wasn’t available. That was the story of my life back then. I found out about things after Matthew turned them down.
Howard: Is that debilitating as an actor, when you find out the role you got was just turned down by a bunch of other people? Don’t you want to feel special, like you were the only guy who could play that role? Or you didn’t care?
Michael: As long as the checks clear.
Howard: Really?
Michael: Yeah, it didn’t bother me too much because I was just a punk up-and-coming kid. When Gary was fighting for me with Brandon, Brandon didn’t want to hire me. He wanted to fire me after the pilot, and he said, “I can’t see this kid on a lunch box.” Then later on, after Back to the Future hit, I had a lunch box made with my picture on it.
Howard: You sent him one?
Michael: I wrote, “Here’s for you to put your crow in.” He was really sweet. He kept it on his desk for the rest of his life.
Howard: After a success like Back to the Future—it’s a franchise picture, and at that point in your life when that movie comes out and it’s huge, everyone in Hollywood probably wanted you for films. Most people would’ve done a really scummy thing and split the TV show.
Michael: It never occurred to me because Gary was just so good to me.
Howard: I remember even thinking like, “What the hell’s he still doing on that show? He could be in any movie he wants.”
Michael: I had to delay running my film career into the ground.
Howard: What do you mean? Did you run your film career into the ground? Do you think you played it wrong?
Michael: What happened was, it got all muddied by my diagnosis. I panicked and signed a three-picture deal and then didn’t have a choice of movies I wanted to do.
Howard: Were you angry when you first got your diagnosis? Like, I would be, “This is not supposed to happen to me. I’m on a major roll in my career. I’ve got a great wife. I’ve got a family. This just doesn’t happen to me.”
Michael: I had that reaction. I had that, like, “Let me come back in the room and deal with the fact that I’m Michael Fox and this isn’t happening to me—that I’m not an eighty-five-year-old man.” The way [the doctor] put it too when I was diagnosed—he told me I had Parkinson’s. I’m dealing with that. And then he said, “But don’t worry, you have another ten good years left to work.” I was twenty-nine years old. That was twentysomething years ago.
Howard: You mean you got the diagnosis of Parkinson’s, you’re told you have ten good years, and so you said to yourself, “Shit, I better do as many movies as I can right now and pack it in.”
Michael: Yeah. And then I realized that that wasn’t the best strategy. But I was never one of those guys that, like, people talk about their career. I was an actor. I was a schmuck. It was like, if I was smart, I wouldn’t be telling Mallory [in Family Ties] to get off the phone.
Howard: In a way, look, we all don’t know how much time we’re going to have with anything, so the Parkinson’s forced you to make a bunch of quick decisions. “I’ll grab everything I can” at that point, because of the position you were in. You probably could’ve taken your time and picked shows and a bunch of different things. I remember a couple of really good movies after Back to the Future.
Michael: Yeah, there were some good movies. It was a strange time because, like I said, the guy told me I had ten years left to work, and I didn’t know—
Howard: What a terrible thing to go through.
Michael: An analogy I always make is it’s like being stuck in the middle of the road with cement feet and a bus is coming. You don’t know when it’s coming. You can hear it but you don’t know when it’ll be there and you don’t know how hard it will hit. Eventually, over time, I realized it’s stupid to be waiting for that—that I should just go on with my life.
Howard: Did you go into therapy right away? I’m talking about psychotherapy.
Michael: A couple years later.
Howard: You waited a couple of years.
Michael: Yeah, my first reaction to it was to start drinking heavily.
Howard: Did you? What’s heavily?
Michael: I used to drink to party, but now I was drinking alone and just drinking to just not—
Howard: Every day?
Michael: Every day.
Howard: You were self-medicating?
Michael: Yeah. Then I quit that and—
Howard: How did you quit? Did you go to AA?
Michael: Yeah.
Howard: Someone said to you, “Look, it’s getting out of control.”
Michael: Yeah.
Howard: You probably were like, “Well, who the fuck cares? I’ve got Parkinson’s and my career is—”
Michael: Well, no. I had a young son and I was married and I didn’t want to screw that up. Then once I did that, it was about a year of a knife fight in the closet, where I just didn’t have my tools to deal with it. Then after that, I went to therapy, and it all started to get really clear to me.
Howard: What did you learn in therapy? How did it get clear? Like, “Hey, this isn’t a death sentence and I can have a life”?
Michael: Just take one day at a time—just, whatever happens, don’t project. The other [thing] is—when you said, do people get all . . . they don’t know how to act. After a while, I figured that it doesn’t matter. I’m just who I am.
Howard: Were you embarrassed at first? Like, when you couldn’t control your body—when you couldn’t control, let’s say, your hand shaking or something. Were you embarrassed or ashamed?
Michael: No, I was just frustrated.
Howard: So you decide, “That’s it, I can’t act anymore.” You walked away from show business. Was that torture for you? Because you love acting.
Michael: I just felt helpless. It just felt unfair in a way. I don’t know. It’s hard to explain.
Howard: Helplessness is the worst feeling ever.
Michael: Yeah.
Howard: We’re under some sort of magical illusion that we’re not helpless. Then it happens, and you go, “I’m in a situation where I’m useless. I can’t do anything about it.”
Michael: That’s when it happens. That’s when it gets better, because then you realize, “I don’t have any control over this, and so fuck it—just be happy for what’s going on.” Then things started to really turn the other way. My marriage got great, and I started to—
Howard: Why did your marriage get great? Because all of a sudden you realized, “Wow, this person really has my back. She’s with me”? Like, “I really appreciate her for maybe the first time.”
Michael: Yeah, exactly.
Robin: Did you expect that she was going to take off the moment there was trouble?
Michael: I didn’t know, but she said she was in. Then I didn’t believe that she was in, and then it became clear to me that she was definitely in. People have this image of her that she’s like this rock. She’s not this stoic champion. She’s like this cool chick who could’ve bolted, but she didn’t.
Howard: I think that’s what people don’t get about relationships, especially guys in Hollywood. “Oh yeah, there’s tons of women out there. I’m trading in,” and all this. If you have a woman who really cares about you and loves you, there’s nothing better than that.
Michael: Laughs at your jokes the nineteenth time around. I’d make the same joke, and Tracy says I’m on a loop and it’s getting shorter.
Howard: How’s this affected your kids, when they saw you going through this? Because you’re sitting at home going, “Shit, I’m a major fucking actor, and now I’m like in self-retirement and I’m a young guy.”
Michael: My son was really young when I was diagnosed. My twin daughters, who are now eighteen, when they were born that was when I was on the upswing, when I was feeling good. It was so cool, because that was one of the big decisions with Tracy and I was whether to have more kids. Then we had more kids and it turned out to be twins, and it was just like this great affirmation. They’ve grown up with it their whole lives. I have an eleven-year-old, and so I’m just shaky Dad.
Howard: They just know you that way.
Michael: If you asked my kids to describe me, I think one of the last things they’d say was I had Parkinson’s.
Howard: Is it physically painful, or is it just like—I don’t know much about the disease, honestly.
Michael: It’s not physically painful itself. If I have a rough day and I’m contorting into strange positions, after a while my muscles kind of complain.
Howard: Does Parkinson’s make reading really difficult when you have to read your script every week?
Michael: It makes reading the newspaper hard in the morning. It’s, like, rattling, but you get used to it.
Howard: Sex still good?
Michael: Sex is great.
Howard: That doesn’t ever get affected?
Michael: No. I would say the only thing about sex is deciding who’s going to be the agent of motion.
Howard: Yeah, who’s moving faster. But you get some new moves, I guess.
Michael: She’s like, “Do that again.” I’m like, “I can’t do it again.”
Howard: That was spontaneous.
Michael: That just happened.
Howard: A couple of people want to talk to you real quick. Scott, go ahead.
Scott: [on the phone] Hey, Howard, I was recently diagnosed with Parkinson’s, and I tell everybody the best part about Parkinson’s is you ain’t gotta try to whack off. It just does it for you.
Howard: Is that true, when you beat off—
Michael: You just gotta stand, and forget it.
Howard: It’s probably like being with a woman. It’s like you can’t control your own masturbation.
Michael: It’s like a bad hand job.
Howard: Is that really true?
Michael: Yeah.
Howard: When you masturbate, what, your hand just goes out of control?
Michael: Well, I don’t do it with the frequency I did as a younger man. But, yeah, it just goes. It’s like brushing your teeth. You just kind of lock into position, then it goes.
Howard: I heard a beautiful story that Muhammad Ali called you personally.
Michael: It was about ten, fifteen years ago. He said, “Now that you’re in the fight, we’ll win.” It was just an amazing moment.
Howard: I would cry. That story gives me the chills.
Michael: I did cry. He is amazing. I have met him and been with him many times since. He’s really in rough shape, man, but—
Howard: He is. Don’t you think he got his Parkinson’s from the fight game?
Michael: I’m sure that getting punched in the head by Joe Frazier can’t be good for you.
Howard: No.
Michael: That’s the thing. I personally don’t wonder what caused that. It doesn’t serve me. I got other stuff to do.
Howard: I get into the blame game with all my stuff. All my personal shit that doesn’t go right in my life, I have to find something to blame because I think it gives me control.
Michael: Yeah, and it’s a big lesson for you—like I said before, realizing I’m along for the ride. The thing is to make the best out of it.