Michael's Brave Battle 'I'M STILL Happy'

DESPITE HIS DECLINING HEALTH, MICHAEL J. FOX HASN’T LOST HIS SENSE OF HUMOR — OR HIS LOVE OF LIFE

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As Michael J. Fox leaves his Upper East Side apartment in NYC, the beloved Family Ties and Back to the Future actor — unsteady after decades of living with Parkinson’s disease — stumbles and falls. Alarmed, a woman walking by rushes to help as he gets up. In the scene — which is captured in Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie, a documentary chronicling his extraordinary life and health battle — Michael assures the worried passerby that he’s OK, joking, “Nice to meet you. You knocked me off my feet!”

That instinctive pivot to humor was his way of putting the fan at ease. But the truth is, Michael’s life is anything but easy. He first publicly revealed his battle with Parkinson’s 25 years ago in 1998. Now, he doesn’t believe he has another 25 — or even 20 — left to live. “I’m not gonna be 80. I’m not gonna be 80,” the 61-year-old actor acknowledges in a heartbreaking new interview. “It’s banging on the door. Yeah, I mean, I’m not gonna lie. It’s getting harder. It’s getting tougher. Every day gets tougher. But that’s the way it is.”

THE POWER OF GRATITUDE