Parkinson’s disease has grown harder to live with over the years, actor Michael J. Fox says, even as he keeps pouring his time and his name into the hunt for a cure. Fox, 65, spoke to People for an interview published Wednesday, September 9, 2026 — the same day he was 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 hand out the prize at a gala on Thursday, September 17.
His symptoms include tremors and balance problems. “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 symptoms first showed up in 1990, when Fox was 29, according to the Lasker Foundation, and a diagnosis of the incurable neurological disorder followed the next year. He kept it to himself for seven years, launching the sitcom “Spin City” with the diagnosis still secret before disclosing it in 1998. Young-onset Parkinson’s affects only 4 percent of people with the disease. In that same private stretch, Fox also got sober, having turned to alcohol to numb the pain of the illness.
Fox walked away from “Spin City” in 2000 after revealing the diagnosis, winning an Emmy for the show that year, and founded the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research. To run it with him he hired Deborah W. Brooks, now the foundation’s co-founder and chief executive. The organization has since put more than $3 billion into research. Fox has also testified before the U.S. Senate without taking his medication, letting lawmakers see the physical effects of the disease unmasked.
More than 20 years ago, he decided to put his name and his face on Parkinson’s. His fame, he told People, could pull attention toward the cause and get the foundation to its goals faster — and as a patient, he shares the impatience of everyone else living with the disease. Speaking to USA Today in July, he described how his relationship with celebrity had shifted: “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 for a further $2.5 billion in Parkinson’s research money. The foundation, he says, is driving toward a world without the disease; nobody can pinpoint when that will arrive, only that it will.
In the same September 9 interview with People, he weighed the odds against the work: “Science is hard. It’s astronomically expensive. It takes time and collaboration.” He also said: “And the science is showing we’re getting close. We’re seeing more research breakthroughs every year, new drugs to help patients live well, and better tools to help scientists move faster.”
Brooks, who has been Fox’s business partner for 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 have remade the global scientific picture, she said: when the organization began, almost nothing had reached human testing of any kind, while as of July, about 180 Parkinson’s drug programs were in human testing.
Back on Set for “Shrinking”
The advocacy has not crowded acting out of his life. Fox came back to television in the third season of the Apple TV series “Shrinking,” which stars Harrison Ford and Jason Segel; Bill Lawrence, his former “Spin City” colleague, created the show. He plays a character with Parkinson’s — a role he has said lets him bring his own condition into the part 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.
He had stepped back from acting in 2020, pointing to trouble memorizing lines and saying that the era of long shooting days was over for him. Six years into that break, he phoned Lawrence about getting back to work. The return, he has said, lengthened his life and kept it more interesting than he had expected, and he says he is not retired. Doctors at his 1991 diagnosis gave him roughly another decade of work in front of a camera; he is about 25 years past that estimate and still going.
A Place on the Lasker Roster
Handed out every year for scientific research and public service, the Lasker Awards are sometimes described as America’s Nobels. Bill and Melinda Gates, Anthony Fauci and Christopher Reeve are among the earlier recipients of the public service prize. That roster is what made the award stand out to him, Fox said, because its winners demonstrate what science can accomplish, and he called being counted among them 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.
The recognition lands on a career already thick with trophies — five Emmys and four Golden Globes. Fox played Alex P. Keaton on NBC’s “Family Ties” from 1982 to 1989 and Marty McFly in the “Back to the Future” trilogy, and he appeared in “Teen Wolf” and “Bright Lights, Big City.” Guest turns on “Scrubs” and “The Good Wife” followed his exit from “Spin City.” He was also in line, as of late July, for the Bob Hope Humanitarian Award at the Emmys.
Fox, a Canadian, spoke in July from his home on Long Island; he and his wife, Tracy Pollan, have four children. More than three decades after his first symptoms, he is still working and still raising money, convinced that a cure is coming.
