Back to His Future: Michael J. Fox Returns to TV

"No complaints, no excuses." That's how Michael J. Fox tackles every day — and his starring role in a new TV series. Here, in a chat with GH Editor in Chief Rosemary Ellis, he shares how he keeps joy in his life, his best marriage advice, and more.

By Jeff Lipsky

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Good Housekeeping So let's talk about your new show on NBC: It's about a guy who leaves his job because he has Parkinson's. After five years, he tells his family he's going back to work, and they essentially say, "Don't let the door hit you on the way out." How much of it is true to your life?

Michael J. Fox It's pretty true; the names were changed to protect the innocent. In the show, my character realizes that he's not doing what he loves and he has no good reason for it. I kind of felt that way, too; beyond The Good Wife and other things, I thought there was a place for me on television.

GH Just for argument's sake, maybe a reason not to do it would be that carrying a TV show is a hugely physically and mentally demanding thing.

MJF A life well lived is demanding and exhausting and tiring; it was already that way without the element of work, so you could say that this job could be the straw that breaks the camel's back — but it could also be the needle in a haystack; it just gets lost in the mass of everything else. And there's the enjoyment that it gives me. It's structured differently than, say, Spin City, where I was much more hands-on. There, I was involved in hiring the wardrobe people and in negotiating with the crew and with the network to get budgets approved. Now I'm much more passive on those things, so I'm not dealing with the frustrating, energy-sapping stuff…being nibbled to death by ducks. I'm duck-repellent now.

GH Did you sense that Tracy and the kids wanted you to go back to work?

MJF The kids were growing up. My two middle daughters just graduated from high school, and my son is out of college and he's working. My little one is 11, but she's very independent — I get a lot from the time I spend with her, and she gets a lot from the time she spends by herself. So it was a good time in that sense.

GH Was there anything your family told you was off-limits in terms of material for the show?

MJF No, because it's all the essence of things. For instance, on the show, my TV family talks about how I always say, "A lady had a baby in a tree," which is based on a story about a woman in Mozambique whose village flooded. She was pregnant and she was going into labor, so to save her baby, she climbed into a tree and gave birth. That stuck with me, and that image has become a kind of shorthand for our family. If my kids come to me with some complaint, I'll say [to put it in perspective], "A lady had a baby in a tree — whaddya got?" And that's in the show.

GH Did anybody tell you not to do the show? What did your doctors say?

MJF It's very subjective, your experience with this condition. I've had it for 20 years now. The rate at which I'm finding ways to cope with it, to medicate it, and to apply exercise and positive thinking to it has surpassed its own march toward awfulness. I'm ahead of it. It's a presence, and it's there, and it takes a toll. Like I've said, it's the gift that keeps on taking.

But it's not enough to stop me from living my life, and I've managed to outperform it to this day. Someone asked me why I was doing the show, and I said, "Why can't I?" My message is this: You know your situation. Don't let others project onto you what they think you should be feeling. By judging my experience, I just thought, I'm ready to do this.

GH You've already gotten a little criticism about the show — people who think you were insensitive. It's surprising, actually.

MJF That's hilarious. I can characterize my situation in whatever way I want to. And it is funny. Certainly there are things that are very hard about it, and this disease takes a terrible toll on people. But on the other hand, it's funny: the idea that my character is passing a spoonful of scrambled eggs — he's trying to prove a point to himself about what he can do — and his family is hungry and they just want to eat. I mean, that's funny. I look at life with humor and say, "What's the good in this? What's the best I can take from this?" And usually the best I can take out of a situation is what makes me laugh. The show is as much about anyone who deals with any hardship or challenge as it is about a guy who has Parkinson's. I really believe, let it be what it is. Accept it; know what it is you're dealing with. And if you do that honestly, and you really look at it and you're not afraid, then you'll see how much space there is around it and how much room there is for other things, other attitudes, and other experiences.

GH What do you want viewers to take away from the show?

MJF Whatever your challenge is, everyone else has one, too. Parkinson's affects the way you present yourself to the world. Better put, it affects the way people see you. But that only matters to the extent that you care about it. I mean, I care about how I treat people, but I don't care about how I look to people. Forget vanity; we spend so much time worrying about that stuff. Parkinson's is a condition that affects the way you communicate and move. We attach shame to it, and there's no shame to it at all.

You know, one of the reasons I started golfing in my 40s with Parkinson's is because it's the most optimistic thing you can do. It's a really hard game. No one ever gets it right. But there's a kind of a shame involved in it, even when you watch the pros. You naturally say to yourself, Oh, you missed that putt, like you stole an orange from the store. One of the reasons I like playing golf is that I have no shame in it. When I hit a shot, it's like I have a foot on each platform of two subway cars and they're moving independently and I'm trying to hit a ball. So, I don't feel embarrassed. I don't attach any feeling of inferiority or of being damaged or of being frail or of being fragile. That's other people's perceptions.

GH Right, that leaves you free to just have fun. When faced with the level of challenges you've been faced with, I think as humans, we reflexively tend to think, Why me? Why does this happen to me? That has never been your M.O., right? In fact, you've said that in some ways your diagnosis has made you a stronger, better person.

MJF It has. Totally.

GH Were you born this way, or did you cultivate this?

MJF My parents were that special generation born in the Great Depression and raised in World War II. They knew what challenge was; they knew about inequity. And so growing up, they were really practical people, but they approached everything with humor. My dad was a tough guy. He was in the army for 25 years and a police dispatcher for 15. He passed away young, in his early 60s. He had a hard life, so I was happy that my siblings and I had success — it was great for my father to see; it gave him the feeling that he had accomplished something, and he truly did. I get that sense of having a real appreciation for what it is to put something into life and get something out of it. And also there have been no complaints and no excuses. If I show up to do a day's work, you've got a right to expect that I'll do it. And I get pleasure out of that. You don't have to look at me and say, "We'll make allowances. We'll forgive less than a full effort because he has this condition." Because I don't feel entitled. Anything good that's happened, I appreciate. And I don't have resentments. I'm not jealous. I don't have any of those feelings, so it makes life really easy. It creates a lot of space.

GH That makes you pretty unusual.

MJF I don't have a lot of issues that others have. I realize that for some, this disease is a real heartbreaker and a real challenge, and I don't belittle that. But if I'm portraying my experience and I want to entertain people, I'm going to want to select the most entertaining, funny part of my experience and share it. I do feel that some of the people who are having a tough time, if they could allow it to only take up the space it takes up and allow it to be only as big as it is, they'd find room to laugh.

GH Do you ever have days when you don't feel like being positive?

MJF I have days when I'm tired — days when I want to turn on a classic-movie channel, hang out, and eat chocolate. But I don't look at that as being negative or depressed; I look at it as, "You've got to do that every now and then."

GH Tell me a little bit about the Michael J. Fox Foundation and the work you're doing now.

MJF I was there yesterday, and it's really gratifying because it's big — it takes up the whole floor of an office building now. We have 80-something employees, and 80-something percent of everything we take in goes directly to research.

The work we're doing is on a lot of different levels. We're trying to find a way to repair the gene [thought to be involved in Parkinson's], the part of the brain that's damaged, and to help it heal itself. And we're working to find biomarkers so we can identify the disease earlier — because right now the only way to diagnose it is when it's already really manifest, and by then so much damage has been done to the brain.

We're also involved with pharmaceutical companies. For instance, dealing with medication and its side effects, like dyskinesia, which is why I do some of the movements I do — although it's better now than it was a few years ago. So we're covering all kinds of bases.

GH How do you find the drive to do all this? Tell me about the spiritual side of your life. Obviously, you tap into something that gives you a lot of strength. Has that shifted over time?

MJF This positivity that I feel is based on a belief — and it's shapeless and amorphous. But I know it's better to be good than to be bad. It's better to ponder the possible than to rue the impossible. There's the saying, "My happiness grows in direct proportion to my acceptance and in inverse proportion to my expectations." And that's what I live by.

Next: Michael J. Fox Shares His Best Marriage Advice

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