Michael J. Fox’s Advice to Younger Self: ‘You Can Do Anything’
By Movieguide® Contributor
As part of PEOPLE’s 50th-anniversary celebration, Michael J. Fox looked back on his career and shared the advice he would have given himself while rising to fame.
“If I did an interview at the beginning, I’d go and sit down in a diner with somebody and crank out a 15-minute interview and have a free cup of coffee and move on,” Fox told PEOPLE. “Then, all of a sudden, I was doing it and there were trucks and cranes and boxes and trampolines and any kind of guitar I wanted to play.”
“Easy on the jumping on the trampolines with a guitar,” he added, recalling the craziness of his youth. “You don’t need to do that. But I was young and impetuous and stupid, it was fun.”
Fox also shared advice for himself a little bit later in his career after he had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s and had to slow down his career to battle the disease.
“You can do anything. Anything,” Fox said. “You don’t have to follow other people’s prognostications for what life is going to be. Life’s going to be what you make it.”
The actor has certainly made the most of life, radically impacting Parkinson’s research while continuing his acting career. The Michael J. Fox Foundation, which Fox founded in 2001, has donated over $1 billion to Parkinson’s research in the past 20 years, greatly advancing researchers’ understanding of the disease.
Fox’s commitment to not letting Parkinson’s define him and continuing to act for a long time after the diagnosis has also inspired others fighting the disease to not give up on their dreams.
Although he retired from acting in 2020 due to the progression of the disease, he recently teased that he would be open to returning to entertainment if the right role came his way. This interest was largely sparked by a documentary about his life that was released last year.
Movieguide® previously reported:
Michael J. Fox recently revealed he would be open to returning to acting if the right role came up.
“I would do acting if something came up that I could put my realities into it, my challenges, if I could figure it out,” Fox told Parade.
He retired from acting in 2020 as his Parkinson’s progressed to the point it was impacting his ability to perform at a world-class level. The disease affects his speech and memory. He was diagnosed in 1991 when he was only 29 years old and went public with his diagnosis in 1998.
Despite struggling with the disease from an early age, Fox has not let Parkinson’s define his life and has achieved everything he set out to do when he first joined Hollywood.
“My biggest goal, I think, was to raise a family,” Fox said. “We have four amazing kids and that’s been the big thing. And then the other is with the foundation.”
- Content: +1Share:
- Content: +4