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 magazine for an interview published Wednesday, September 9, 2026 — the same day the Lasker Foundation named him winner of its Lasker~Bloomberg Public Service Award, for “empowering patients’ voices and accelerating research to find improved therapies and a cure for Parkinson’s disease.”
His symptoms include tremors and balance problems. “Of course, things have gotten harder over the years,” Fox told the magazine. “But I’m privileged to commit my time and energy to bringing everything I’ve got to help cure this disease.”
Symptoms at 29, Diagnosis at 30
The first symptoms showed up in 1990, when Fox was 29 and filming “Doc Hollywood,” and the diagnosis of the incurable neurological disorder followed the next year, at 30. He kept it to himself for seven years, launching the sitcom “Spin City” in 1996 while it stayed secret, then disclosing it in 1998. Young-onset Parkinson’s, which the Parkinson’s Foundation defines as a diagnosis before 50, accounts for about 4 percent of cases. Fox also got sober in those years, having turned to alcohol to numb the illness.
He left “Spin City” in 2000, the year the show also brought him an Emmy, and founded the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research, bringing in Deborah W. Brooks, today its co-founder and chief executive, as his partner. The organization has since funded worldwide research worth more than $3 billion and says it has had a hand in 23 drug approvals over the past decade. On September 28, 1999, Fox testified before a Senate appropriations subcommittee without taking his medication first, leaving the disease’s effects unmasked for the lawmakers.
His fame, he told People, could pull attention toward the cause and speed the foundation’s work. He put the shift to USA Today this way: “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
Fox told People the foundation was about to launch a campaign for a further $2.5 billion. It opened on September 17 as “All Grit. No Quit.” Nobody can pinpoint when a cure will arrive, he said — only that it will.
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, Fox’s business partner of more than 25 years, told The Hollywood Reporter in July that two decades of foundation-funded research have remade the scientific picture: “When we started, almost nothing had made it all the way into human testing of any kind. Today, there are 180-ish active Parkinson’s drug programs in human testing.”
Back on Set for “Shrinking”
The advocacy has not crowded out acting. Fox returned to television in the third season of the Apple TV series “Shrinking,” co-created by his former “Spin City” colleague Bill Lawrence, and starring Harrison Ford as a therapist who also has Parkinson’s. Fox plays Gerry, a fellow patient Ford’s character meets in a neurology clinic waiting room and later discovers only he can see — a role he has said lets him carry his own condition into the work.
The season premiered on January 28, and he drew a 19th Emmy nomination for the role, as outstanding guest actor in a comedy series. He lost that award at the Creative Arts Emmys on September 6 to the late Rob Reiner, who won posthumously for “The Bear.”
He had stepped back from acting in 2020, citing trouble memorizing lines and the growing unreliability of his speech. Five years passed before he phoned Lawrence about getting back to work. The return, he has said, lengthened his life and kept it more interesting than he expected. Doctors at his diagnosis gave him roughly another decade in front of a camera; that estimate is about 25 years behind him.
A Place on the Lasker Roster
The Lasker Awards are handed out every year for scientific research and public service and are sometimes called America’s Nobels; the public service prize is given every other year and carries a $250,000 honorarium. Bill and Melinda Gates, Anthony Fauci and Christopher Reeve have all taken it. The 2026 research awards went to Emmanuel Mignot and Masashi Yanagisawa, for identifying the brain peptide orexin, and to three Chugai Pharmaceutical scientists for a hemophilia A treatment.
Fox said that roster drew him to the award, because its winners demonstrate what science can accomplish. “Receiving a Lasker is humbling,” he said in his remarks at the gala on Thursday, September 17. “I share this honor with everyone who works side by side with us — scientists, policymakers, and most of all, the patients and families who give their all to this cause.”
The recognition lands on a career 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. He collected another on Monday, September 14, when the Television Academy gave him the Bob Hope Humanitarian Award at the 78th Emmy Awards and the room rose to its feet. “Initially, I kept my Parkinson’s diagnosis a secret. I worried that it would affect my work and my relationship with audiences,” he told the audience. “Would they laugh if they knew I was sick? And then I was stunned by the support I got.” He said accepting Parkinson’s had never meant surrendering to it.
Fox, born in Edmonton, Alberta, watched with his wife, Tracy Pollan — their first Emmy night together in 13 years. They have four children. More than three decades after his first symptoms, he is still working and still raising money, convinced a cure is coming.
