Michael J. Fox has faced considerable challenges recently.
The beloved actor has been battling Parkinson’s disease for many years, and as one might expect, this struggle doesn’t become easier over time.
However, it’s worth noting that Michael’s childhood was also difficult, and he encountered significant obstacles on his journey to break into Hollywood.
Overall, Michael J. Fox has achieved great success, despite the toll Parkinson’s disease has taken on him.
To begin with, his upbringing was quite unique.
Born on June 9, 1961, in Edmonton, Canada, he was raised in a family that frequently relocated due to his father’s career in the Canadian Armed Forces.
Michael’s mother worked as a payroll clerk, providing a stable income, but he grew up in a typical blue-collar household. Eventually, the family settled in Burnaby, British Columbia, where Michael discovered his passion for acting during junior high.
He joined the drama division at school, quickly showcasing his talent. According to his website, his theater teacher encouraged him to audition for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation series Leo & Me, and he landed the role.
Michael secured several television roles while also working at a local theater in Vancouver. At that point, he realized acting was his true calling. At 17, he decided to pursue his dreams in Los Angeles.
“I knew that if I wanted to be someone, I couldn’t just sit on my parents’ porch and think, ‘Boy, if I was only born in the States and my parents had money and weren’t living paycheck to paycheck, I could do something with my life,’” he recalled.
Fox dropped out of high school, but his parents supported his ambitions. His father even drove him all the way to Los Angeles. In a recent appearance on LIVE with Kelly and Mark, Fox admitted he still doesn’t know how he managed to convince his father to make the trip.
“I told him that I wanted to go to Los Angeles, I knew I wanted to go to the United States, I knew I wanted to be an actor. My father, I know, thought I was a hippie. He looked me in the eyes and said, ‘If you want to be a lumberjack, you might as well go to the forest.’ So he got me in the car and drove me to California,” Michael J. Fox reflected.
However, achieving success in Hollywood was more challenging than he anticipated. Coming from a working-class family, Michael didn’t have much wealth to help him get started.
“I was living on the margins. I was 18 years old, with no money, no connections, literally dumpster diving for food,” he shared with Variety in 2023.
Fox achieved his dream of becoming an actor, and after just a few years, he landed one of his most iconic roles. He was cast as Alex P. Keaton on the comedy series Family Ties, which became one of the biggest sitcoms on television.
Not long after, he secured other roles, including his iconic part as Marty McFly in “Back to the Future”.
In 2022, he shared that his mother had reservations about him taking on the role in “Back to the Future”, and it seems her concerns were valid.
At the time he was cast, he was already working during the day on “Family Ties”. He recounted their conversation, saying, “I was 23 years old, and I called her, she was in Canada, and I said, ‘They want me to do this Steven Spielberg movie, but I have to do it at night and I have to do Family Ties in the daytime.’ And she said, ‘You’ll be too tired.’”
However, he later admitted that his mother might have had a point. He said, “I live for this kind of tired. It’ll be okay,” reassuring her. “To this day — well, till two weeks ago — my mother thought it was a really bad idea for me to do Back to the Future. She loved the movie, [but she was right], I got tired.”
While filming “Family Ties”, he met Tracy Pollan, and they were cast as each other’s love interests on the show. Although their chemistry was limited to the screen at that time, they would eventually reconnect and fall in love a few years later.
Despite everything, Michael J. Fox had already developed a crush on Tracy while working on Family Ties.
“I developed a crush on her right away. When she left the show – the day she left the show, we were in the parking lot getting into our respective cars. She was getting into a rented Volkswagen, and I was getting into my Ferrari. And she called me over and said she wanted to play me a song. She played me a James Taylor song called That’s Why I’m Here, which was ostensibly about John Belushi. And one of the lines was, ‘John’s gone, found dead, died high. He’s brown bread, later said to have drowned in his bed. After the laughter, the wave of dread, it hits us like a ton of lead. That’s why we’re here,’” Fox shared in an interview with NPR.
Michael J. Fox and Tracy Pollan got married in 1988 and have four children: Sam Michael Fox (born in 1989), twins Schuyler Frances and Aquinnah Kathleen (born in 1995), and Esmé Annabelle (born in 2001).
Interestingly, Michael didn’t originally have the “J” in his name. When he arrived in Hollywood and applied to join the Screen Actors Guild (SAG), he discovered there was already a member named “Michael Fox.” To avoid confusion, he decided to add a middle initial, choosing “J” in honor of his favorite actor, Michael J. Pollard.
Michael J. Fox officially retired from acting in 2020 at the age of 60, after his role as Louis Canning in CBS’s legal drama “The Good Fight,” a spin-off of “The Good Wife,” where his character first appeared.
“I reached the point where I couldn’t rely on my ability to speak on any given day, which meant I couldn’t act comfortably at all anymore. So, last year I gave it up,” he shared about his retirement in an interview with Good Morning America.
