Michael J. Fox: ‘If You Put Your Mind to It, You Can Do Anything’

FORTY YEARS AFTER MICHAEL J. FOX PUSHED HIS LIMITS FILMING BOTH BACK TO THE FUTURE AND FAMILY TIES, THE ACTOR AND PARKINSON’S RESEARCH ADVOCATE CONTINUES TO DEFY EXPECTATIONS

- ERIC ANDERSSON,MARK SELIGER

Michael J. Fox has a vivid memory from 40 years ago. It’s a winter evening in 1985, and he’s backstage at Paramount Studios in Hollywood, waiting for his cue to walk out in front of a live audience assembled at Stage 24 for a taping of his NBC comedy Family Ties. Suddenly he panics. The camcorder he needs for his scene isn’t on the prop table. After a few seconds it dawns on him: It’s not his Family Ties character Alex P. Keaton who uses a camcorder—that would be Marty McFly, his alter ego from Back to the Future, the movie he’s been filming each night after the sitcom. He tapes the scene, and four hours later he’s shuttling to job No. 2. “I’m feeling the strain,” he recalls in his new book Future Boy, “but that’s nobody’s business but mine.”

If there’s anyone who exhibits grace under pressure, it’s Fox. Four decades after pulling off that feat, the actor and Parkinson’s disease research advocate still sets high standards for himself, like cowriting Future Boy—which recounts that intense time making two major projects simultaneously—in just nine months to coincide with the 40th anniversary of Back to the Future. And when it comes to tackling seemingly impossible challenges, Fox, 64, likes to paraphrase a famous line from that very movie. “If you put your mind to it,” he says, sitting in his New York City office while sipping from a can of Coke Zero, “you can do anything.”

Over the past several months he’s been doing quite a lot. Aside from writing Future Boy with longtime collaborator Nelle Fortenberry, Fox filmed a guest arc in the upcoming third season of the Apple TV+ series Shrinking, five years after retiring from acting in 2020 amid health struggles related to his Parkinson’s. “I’m always retiring,” quips Fox, who previously said he’d stop acting after leaving Spin City in 2000.