Michael J. Fox, 60, Reveals Memory Loss Due to Parkinson’s Disease
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Michael J. Fox shared how Parkinson’s disease continues to impact his acting work.
The actor, now 60, was diagnosed with the neurodegenerative condition at 29.
“I just had this blank,” he said, recalling a recent role. “I couldn’t remember the lines.”
Michael J. Fox was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease at just 29-years-old. And over the last 30 years, he has continued acting by taking on roles that make his symptoms shine. In 2004, he played a doctor with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) on Scrubs, then there was The Good Wife’s Louis Canning, a lawyer who used his neurological symptoms to manipulate juries. But as he gets older and his condition progresses, the 60-year-old admits that line memorization is becoming more difficult.
“When I did the spinoff from The Good Wife, which is The Good Fight, I couldn’t remember the lines. I just had this blank, I couldn’t remember the lines,” he said recently on Mike Birbiglia’s Working It Out podcast. The memory loss is a difficult adjustment for Fox, who used to crank out pages of dialogue without a second thought.
“I knew it, like in an instant, and it continued to be that way for me,” he recalled. “I[’d] have 70 pages of dialogue on a [Brian] De Palma movie, and knowing that a hugely expensive Steadicam shot depends on me knowing the lines—not a trickle of sweat on my brow.” (Fox was, of course, referring to his role in De Palma’s 1989 film Casualties of War.)
Now, he has to choose his roles based on what he knows he’ll be able to remember. “I can’t remember five pages of dialogue. I can’t do it,” he said. But he at least doesn’t let the newfound shortcoming get him down. When he blanked on his lines for The Good Fight, instead of panicking, he just accepted his new reality. “I said, ‘That’s that,’” he told Birbiglia.
As being on-camera has grown to be more of a challenge for Fox, he’s turned to writing as a main creative outlet—having recently released his fourth memoir, No Time Like the Future. “I’m down to this,” he told People in 2020. “My guitar playing is no good. My sketching is no good anymore, my dancing never was good and acting is getting tougher to do. So it’s down to writing. Luckily, I really enjoy it.”
In general, finding gratitude for the things he can do is what has helped Fox stay positive with Parkinson’s. It’s also why he started The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research, which has raised over $1 billion for efforts to find a cure. “If you can find something to be grateful for, then optimism is sustainable,” he recently told AARP. “At 60, I just feel like, in spite of this thing I carry every day, I love my life, I love my wife, I love my kids ... Parkinson’s is just this thing that’s attached to my life. It isn’t the driver ... I’m really lucky, and I try to spread that luck around.”
According to the Parkinson’s Foundation, Parkinson’s disease is a progressive neurodegenerative disorder that predominately affects dopamine-producing neurons in the brain, resulting in an array of motor and non-motor symptoms including tremors, limb rigidity, cognitive impairment, and balance problems. Nearly one million people in the United States live with the condition, and an estimated 1.2 million will be diagnosed by 2030.
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