Michael J. Fox is heading back in front of the camera for a fourth season of Apple TV’s Shrinking, some 25 years after doctors first warned him his Parkinson’s diagnosis would force him off screen for good.
The actor, now 65, was diagnosed with Parkinson’s in 1991 while riding high on the success of Family Ties, and was told at the time that he had roughly a decade left before the disease would make performing too difficult.
He kept the diagnosis private for seven years, carrying on through the run of Spin City before going public and, alongside his wife Tracy Pollan, becoming one of the most recognisable faces of the Parkinson’s community.
He’s now up for an Emmy for his debut season-three turn on Shrinking, and is preparing to head to California to begin shooting more episodes.
His relationship with acting hasn’t been a straight line.
He stepped away from performing during the pandemic, finding it too difficult to rely on his speech day to day, and stayed retired for six years before ringing his old friend and Spin City collaborator Bill Lawrence to get back into the business.
Reflecting on that decision, Fox said: “It’s really prolonged my life and made my life interesting in a way that I didn’t think it would be to this point. I’m not retired from acting, but if I didn’t act again, it would be for a very good reason. I let Parkinson’s make decisions for me.”
Beyond acting, Fox has spent the past 25 years running the Michael J. Fox Foundation alongside co-founder and CEO Deborah Brooks, a nonprofit that has funded more than $3 billion in Parkinson’s research and is aiming to hit $700 million in new commitments this year, a sum Brooks says nearly triples what the US government put towards Parkinson’s research in 2025.
When Brooks joined the organisation, she came from a background in investment banking rather than medicine, and has described learning about the disease’s lesser-known symptoms, like constipation and loss of smell, directly from patients because the medical establishment hadn’t yet caught up.
On screen, Fox has continued finding roles that let him draw on his condition rather than hide it, from his Emmy-nominated stint as the calculating lawyer Louis Canning on The Good Wife to a fictionalised version of himself on Curb Your Enthusiasm.
Shrinking marked a new milestone for him: it’s the first time he’s played a character interacting with another character who also has Parkinson’s, in scenes opposite Harrison Ford.
Fox has spoken warmly about how open and affectionate Ford was in developing that dynamic, calling him a “sweetheart” despite his reputation for being more reserved.
