Life with Parkinson’s disease has gotten harder over the years, actor Michael J. Fox says, even as he keeps pouring his time and his name into the search for a cure. Fox, 65, talked about the illness in an interview with People magazine published on Wednesday, September 9, 2026 — the day he was also named winner of the Lasker-Bloomberg Public Service Award, cited for “dispelling the stigma of the disease and spearheading a revolution in the world of Parkinson’s research.” Organizers scheduled the presentation for a gala ceremony in New York City on Thursday, September 17.
Tremors and balance problems are among the symptoms he lives with. “Of course, things have gotten harder over the years,” Fox said of the disease. He added: “I’m privileged to commit my time and energy to bringing everything I’ve got to help cure this disease.”
A Diagnosis at 29
The first symptoms showed up in 1990, when Fox was 29, according to the Lasker Foundation, and the incurable neurological disorder was diagnosed the following year. He said nothing publicly for seven years, launching the sitcom “Spin City” while the diagnosis stayed secret, then disclosing it in 1998. Only 4 percent of people with the disease have young-onset Parkinson’s. Fox also got sober during those private years, having turned to alcohol to numb the pain of the illness.
In 2000, after revealing the diagnosis, he left “Spin City” — winning an Emmy for the show that year — and founded the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research, hiring Deborah W. Brooks, now the foundation’s co-founder and chief executive, to run it alongside him. Research funded by the organization since then tops $3 billion.
He has testified before the U.S. Senate as well, without taking his medication so lawmakers could see the disease’s physical effects unmasked.
More than 20 years ago he chose to put his name and his face on Parkinson’s, telling People that his celebrity could draw attention and speed the foundation’s goals, and that as a patient he feels the same impatience as everyone else living with the disease. He described that shift in his relationship with fame to USA Today in July: “The point where it got boring and tedious turned into a lever to operate a much bigger machine.”
The Push for Another $2.5 Billion
Now Fox is launching a campaign to raise a further $2.5 billion for Parkinson’s research. The foundation, he says, is driving toward a world without the disease, and while nobody can pinpoint when that will arrive, he is certain it will.
Brooks, Fox’s business partner of more than 25 years, told The Hollywood Reporter in July: “It’s a hard disease — the care is hard to get, it’s not easy at all.” Two decades of foundation-funded research, she said, have remade the global scientific picture: almost nothing had reached human testing of any kind when the organization began, while about 180 Parkinson’s drug programs were in human testing as of July.
Back on Set in “Shrinking”
Acting hasn’t been crowded out by the advocacy. Fox came back to television in the third season of the Apple TV series “Shrinking,” which stars Harrison Ford and Jason Segel and comes from creator Bill Lawrence, his former “Spin City” colleague. His character has Parkinson’s, a part he has said lets him bring his own condition into the role rather than hide it, and one he found hugely enjoyable to shoot. The season aired in the winter and brought Fox a 2026 Emmy nomination. He has said he hopes to return for a fourth season.
Trouble memorizing lines was among the reasons he stepped back from acting in 2020, and he said then that the era of long shooting days had ended for him. Six years passed before he called Lawrence about getting back to work. The return, he has said, lengthened his life and made it more interesting than he had expected, and he says he is not retired. Doctors who diagnosed him in 1991 told him he had roughly another decade of work in front of a camera; he is about 25 years past that estimate and still going.
Joining the Lasker Roster
Sometimes called America’s Nobels, the Lasker Awards go out every year for scientific research and public service. Bill and Melinda Gates, Anthony Fauci and Christopher Reeve are among the past winners of the public service prize. Fox said the award stood out to him because its recipients demonstrate what science can accomplish, and he described being counted among them as humbling. The honor, he said, belongs as much to the scientists and clinicians pursuing a cure, and to the patients and families whose experience guides that work. In a statement, the Lasker Foundation said Fox and his organization have helped break down the stigma of the disease and led a transformation in Parkinson’s research.
His trophy shelf was already crowded: five Emmys and four Golden Globes. Fox played Alex P. Keaton on NBC’s “Family Ties” from 1982 to 1989, starred as Marty McFly in the “Back to the Future” trilogy and appeared in “Teen Wolf” and “Bright Lights, Big City.” Guest turns on “Scrubs” and “The Good Wife” followed his exit from “Spin City.” At the 78th Primetime Emmy Awards on Monday, September 14, he received the Bob Hope Humanitarian Award, and the room stood for him both before and after he spoke. He was nominated that same night for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Comedy Series for “Shrinking”; Rob Reiner won the category for “The Bear.”
Fox, a Canadian who spoke in July from his home on Long Island, has four children with his wife, Tracy Pollan. More than three decades after his first symptoms, he is still working and still raising money, convinced that a cure is coming.