Michael J. Fox
Fox began his career as a child actor in the 1970s before becoming a film star portraying Marty McFly in the Back to the Future film trilogy (1985โ1990). Fox went on to star in films such as Teen Wolf (1985), The Secret of My Success (1987), Casualties of War (1989), Doc Hollywood (1991), and The Frighteners (1996). Fox also voiced roles in the Stuart Little films (1999โ2005) and Atlantis: The Lost Empire (2001).
On television, he took leading roles as Alex P. Keaton on the NBC sitcom Family Ties (1982โ1989), Mike Flaherty in the ABC sitcom Spin City (1996โ2000), and Michael Henry in the NBC sitcom The Michael J. Fox Show (2013โ2014), the former two of which earned him Primetime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series.
He took guest roles on shows such as Boston Legal (2006), Rescue Me (2009), The Good Wife (2010โ2016), The Good Fight (2020), Curb Your Enthusiasm (2011, 2017), Designated Survivor (2018), and Shrinking (2026).
In 1998, Fox disclosed his 1991 diagnosis of Parkinson's disease (PD). He became an advocate for finding a cure and founded The Michael J. Fox Foundation in 2000 to help fund research. For his advocacy of a cure for Parkinson's disease, he received the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award in 2022, the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2025, and the Bob Hope Humanitarian Award in 2026.
Early life
Fox was born on June 9, 1961, in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. His mother, Phyllis Evelyn (nรฉe Piper; 1929โ2022), was a payroll clerk and actress, while his father, William Nelson "Bill" Fox (1928โ1990), served as a regular soldier in the Royal Canadian Corps of Signals. When they met in Ladner, Delta, British Columbia, Phyllis was working for The Ladner Optimist, a local newspaper, and Bill was serving at the nearby Vancouver Wireless Station.
The couple married in 1950. The fifth of six children, Fox has three sisters and two brothers. Phyllis's father was an English emigrant, and her mother was an emigrant from Belfast, Northern Ireland. Bill's mother was born in Alberta to American parents, and his father was an English emigrant.
The Fox family lived in various cities and towns across Canada due to Bill's career. Bill served in the army for 25 years, retiring in 1971. The same year, the family moved to Burnaby, British Columbia. From the following year to 1985, Bill worked as a dispatcher for the Delta Police Department. Fox attended Burnaby Central Secondary School and has a theatre named for him at Burnaby South Secondary School.
At the age of 16, he starred in the Canadian television series Leo and Me, produced by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. In 1979, Fox moved to Los Angeles, California, to further his acting career.
Fox was discovered by producer Ronald Shedlo and made his American debut in the television film Letters from Frank, credited under the name "Michael Fox". However, when he registered with the Screen Actors Guild, he discovered that Michael Fox, a veteran actor, was already registered under that name. Fox explained in his memoir Lucky Man:
The Screen Actors Guild prohibits any two members from working under the same stage name, and they already had a 'Michael Fox' on the books. My middle name is Andrew, but 'Andrew Fox' or 'Andy Fox' didn't cut it for me. 'Michael A. Fox' was even worse, the word fox having recently come into use as a synonym for attractive. (Presumptuous?) It also sounded uncomfortably Canadian โ Michael Eh?
Fox โ but maybe I was just being oversensitive. And then I remembered one of my favorite character actors, Michael J. Pollard, the guileless accomplice in Bonnie and Clyde. I stuck in the J, which sometimes I tell people stands for either Jenuine or Jenius, and resubmitted my forms.
Acting career
1980โ1984: Early roles and television
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.
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, "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.
1985โ1990: Back to the Future and stardom
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, on which Fox was working at the time, refused to allow Zemeckis even to approach Fox.
Goldberg 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 humour involved.
Zemeckis quickly replaced Stoltz with Fox, whose schedule was now more open with the return of Baxter. During filming, Fox rehearsed for Family Ties from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.; he 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 critical and commercial success.
The film spent eight consecutive weekends as the number-one movie at the US box office in 1985, and it 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.
Fox's performance in particular was praised, earning him a nomination for Best Actor in a Motion Picture โ Musical or Comedy at the 43rd Golden Globe Awards. The film was followed by two successful sequels, Back to the Future Part II (1989) and Back to the Future Part III (1990), which were produced at the same time but released separately.
While filming the scene where Buford "Mad Dog" Tannen tries to hang Marty in Part III, Fox was allowed to perform the stunt himself as long as he knew where to put his hand on the noose to keep himself from choking; however, on the third take, Fox accidentally placed his hand in the wrong spot, which resulted in him choking, passing out, and nearly dying until Zemeckis noticed him in peril and had him cut down.
As a result of working on Family Ties and his back-to-back hit performances in Back to the Future and Teen Wolf (1985), Fox became a teen idol. The VH1 television series The Greatest later named him among their "50 Greatest Teen Idols".
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), and Bright Lights, Big City (1988). In The Secret of My Success, Fox played a recent graduate from Kansas State University who moves to New York City, where he deals 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 won three Emmy Awards for Family Ties in 1986, 1987, and 1988. He won a Golden Globe Award in 1989, the year the show ended. 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.
Fox then starred in Casualties of War (1989), 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 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." While Family Ties was ending, his production company Snowback Productions set up a two-year production pact at Paramount Pictures to develop film and television projects.
1991โ2001: Further films and acclaim
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, of 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,[citation needed] appearing in For Love or Money (1993), Life with Mikey (1993), and Greedy (1994).
In the mid-1990s Fox played 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. 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."
In the 1990s and 2000s, Fox took on multiple voice acting roles. 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 James Thatch in Disney's animated film Atlantis: The Lost Empire.
1996โ2020: Later career and retirement
Spin City ran from 1996 to 2002 on American television network ABC. The show depicts a fictional New York City government, originally starring Fox as Deputy Mayor Mike Flaherty. Fox served as an executive producer of Spin City alongside co-creators Bill Lawrence and Gary David Goldberg. He 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, Fox told the cast and crew of the show that he had Parkinson's disease, and during the fourth season, he announced his retirement from the show. A character played by Charlie Sheen replaced his, and he made three more appearances during the final season. In 2002, his Lottery Hill Entertainment production company attempted to set up a pilot for ABC with DreamWorks Television and Touchstone Television company via first-look agreements, but it never went to series.
In 2004, Fox guest-starred in two episodes of the comedy-drama Scrubs โ created by Spin City creator Bill Lawrence โ as Dr. Kevin Casey, a surgeon with severe obsessive-compulsive disorder. 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 American drama The Good Wife as crafty attorney Louis Canning and earned Emmy nominations for three consecutive years.
In 2011, Fox portrayed himself in the eighth season of Larry David's Curb Your Enthusiasm, in which David's fictionalized self becomes Fox's neighbour and accuses him of using his Parkinson's disease as a manipulative tool. Fox returned in 2017 for a brief appearance, referencing his prior time on the show.
In August 2012, NBC announced that Fox would star in The Michael J. Fox Show, loosely based on his life. It was granted a 22-episode commitment from the network and premiered in September 2013, but was taken off the air after 15 episodes and 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 sound-alike A.J. LoCascio voicing 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.
Fox appeared in five episodes of the second season of the ABC political drama Designated Survivor, in the recurring role of Ethan West, investigating whether the president was fit to continue in the job.
In 2020, Fox retired from acting due to the increasing unreliability of his speech. Fox's memoir, No Time Like the Future: An Optimist Considers Mortality, was released that November. In the book, Fox explained that "not being able to speak reliably is a game-breaker for an actor" and 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."
2021โpresent: Still, and return to acting
In 2021, Fox appeared in one episode of the television series Expedition: Back to the Future, as well as in the animated film Back Home Again. On May 12, 2023, Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie, a documentary which follows his career and Parkinson's disease diagnosis, was released. The film was directed by Davis Guggenheim and made for Apple TV+.
It was positively received, winning four of the seven awards it was nominated for at the 75th Primetime Emmy Awards. Stephanie Zacharek on behalf of Time wrote, "Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie reminds us that a person stricken with a disease doesn't become that disease... What's striking about Still is how celebratory it is.
This isn't the story of a wonderful actor felled by an illness; it's the story of a wonderful actor," while Mark Kermode of The Guardian called it "An intimate, uplifting star portrait."
On June 29, 2024, he was featured on the Glastonbury Festival as a guest of British rock band Coldplay, playing the guitar with them on the songs "Humankind" and "Fix You". Lead singer and pianist Chris Martin mentioned during the show that "Back to the Future is the main reason we became a band".
On May 15, 2025, it was revealed that Fox had been cast in the third season of the comedy drama Shrinking, making a return to acting. In June 2025, Fox acted for the National Hockey League's Boston Bruins, playing himself in a video parodying Back to the Future to promote new uniforms for the team. Fox is a close friend of Bruins president Cam Neely, who also appeared in the video.
On October 14, 2025, his fifth book, Future Boy: Back to the Future and My Journey Through the Space-Time Continuum, co-written with Nelle Fortenberry, was published by Flatiron Books. The memoir covers his time on set while filming Back to the Future.
He had a voice cameo in the 2025 Walt Disney Animation Studios film Zootopia 2 as an incarcerated fox, whose nameโ"Michael J. the fox"โis a play on Fox's own name.
Activism
While shooting the film Doc Hollywood in early 1991, Fox developed a sore shoulder and a twitch in his little finger; he was subsequently diagnosed with early-onset Parkinson's disease later that year at the age of 30, but did not make his condition known to the public until 1998. He became an activist and began The Michael J. Fox Foundation to increase research efforts for a cure.
Fox has written several memoirs about his experiences. 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 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.
โ Michael J. Fox, Campaign Advertisement for Claire McCaskill
๐ Source: Wikipedia
