Why Michael J. Fox Says Going Public with His Parkinson’s Diagnosis Was ‘Hell’ for His Wife Tracy Pollan
Why Michael J. Fox Says Going Public with His Parkinson’s Diagnosis Was ‘Hell’ for His Wife Tracy Pollan
Cara Lynn ShultzThu, July 23, 2026 at 11:22 PM UTC
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Michael J. Fox and wife Tracy Pollan in Nashville in 2024Credit: Terry Wyatt/Getty -
Michael J. Fox says going public with his Parkinson’s diagnosis was challenging for his wife Tracy Pollan
Fox founded the Michael J. Fox Foundation, which has funded more than $3 million in Parkinson’s research since 1998
He says acting, including his role on Shrinking, has prolonged his life and kept it interesting
Michael J. Fox says that being the public face of Parkinson’s can be a challenge for his family.
“It was hell on Tracy, it was really hard on her — and it still is because it’s always changing,” the actor, 65, told The Hollywood Reporterabout the impact on wife Tracy Pollan when he went public with his diagnosis. “But I said to her, ‘I have to go all the way here. No half measures.’ ”
“I started to understand what it was like for these people who didn’t have the options or the choices I had, didn’t have the connections and the reason to be optimistic,” the Back to the Future actor continued in the interview, published on Wednesday, July 22. “I needed to normalize it and just be that all the time. I said, ‘I have to not hide this. F--- vanity.’ ”
Michael J. Fox in Nashville in April 2026Credit: John Shearer/Getty
Fox was just 29 when he was diagnosed with early-onset Parkinson’s disease in 1991. It’s a progressive movement disorder of the nervous system, Mayo Clinic explains. He publicly disclosed his diagnosis in 1998 and founded the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research, which has since funded more than $3 billion in research.
He told the outlet that when he went public, he was taken aback by how the news was enthusiastically received by those with the disease.
“I thought, ‘Well, f--- you! I have Parkinson’s and you’re celebrating,’ ” Fox told The Hollywood Reporter, later adding, “I got it. People back then would never in a million years tell you they had Parkinson’s.”
“There isn’t any other Parkinson’s patient who’s letting people see their lives 35 years into a Parkinson’s diagnosis,” Deborah W. Brooks, Fox’s longtime business partner and CEO of the Michael J. Fox Foundation, told The Hollywood Reporter. “That is such an active choice of generosity. It’s not an ego thing. It is a willingness to just be.”
Deborah W. Brooks and Michael J. Fox in Los Angeles in July 2026Credit: Axelle/Bauer-Griffin/FilmMagic
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The foundation, Brooks explains, has made real change in the field of Parkinson’s research.
“It’s a hard disease — the care is hard to get, it’s not easy at all. The scientific landscape globally is also transformed, and that’s a direct byproduct of all the research we have funded in the last 20-plus years,” she told The Hollywood Reporter. “When we started, almost nothing had made it all the way into human testing of any kind. Today, there are 180-ish active Parkinson’s drug programs in human testing.”
After announcing his retirement during the COVID pandemic, Fox returned to acting on Shrinking, playing a Parkinson’s disease patient opposite Harrison Ford, whose character, Paul, also has Parkinson’s. The role, which he said was “the first time I played someone interacting with someone else who had Parkinson’s,” earned Fox an Emmy nomination.
“[Ford] was happy that I was sharing my experience with him as a character and helping him do what he needed to do,” he told The Hollywood Reporter. “He was so loving. I didn’t know what to expect with Harrison because he’s famously a stoic, curmudgeonly guy — and he’s really a sweetheart.”
Harrison Ford and Michael J. Fox on Apple TV’s ‘Shrinking’Credit: Robert Voets/Apple TV
Returning to acting, he said, has “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,” Fox told The Hollywood Reporter. “I let Parkinson’s make decisions for me.”
Shrinking is now streaming on Apple TV.
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Source: “AOL Entertainment”
