Biography of Michael J. Fox

Michael Andrew Fox , known professionally as Michael J. Fox, is a retired Canadian-American actor, author, film producer and activist, with a film and television career spanning from the 1970s. He starred in the Back to the Future trilogy in which he portrayed Marty McFly. On television, he played Alex P. Keaton on the American sitcom Family Ties and Mike Flaherty on the ABC sitcom Spin City . He has won five Primetime Emmy Awards, four Golden Globe Awards, a Grammy Award, and two Screen Actors Guild Awards. Fox was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease in 1991 at age 29, and disclosed his condition to the public in 1998. He semi-retired from acting in 2000 as the symptoms of the disease worsened. He has since become an advocate for research toward finding a cure, and founded the Michael J. Fox Foundation. Sweden's Karolinska Institute gave him an honorary doctorate on March 5, 2010 for his work advocating a cure for Parkinson's disease. Since 1999, Fox has mainly worked as a voice-over actor in films such as Stuart Little and Disney's Atlantis: The Lost Empire. On the CBS TV show The Good Wife, he earned Emmy nominations for three consecutive years for his recurring role as crafty attorney Louis Canning. He has also taken recurring guest roles and cameo appearances in Boston Legal, Scrubs, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Rescue Me, and Designated Survivor. He has written four books: Lucky Man: A Memoir , Always Looking Up: The Adventures of an Incurable Optimist , A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Future: Twists and Turns and Lessons Learned , and No Time Like the Future: An Optimist Considers Mortality . He was appointed an Officer of the Order of Canada in 2010 and was also inducted into Canada's Walk of Fame in 2000. In 2020, Fox retired from acting due to his worsening health. Fox was born Michael Andrew Fox in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada on June 9, 1961 to Phyllis , an actress and payroll clerk, and William Fox, a police officer and Canadian Forces member. He is of Irish, English and Scottish descent. His family lived in various cities and towns across Canada because of his father's career. They finally moved to Burnaby, a large suburb of Vancouver, British Columbia, when his father retired in 1971. His father died on January 6, 1990 from a heart attack. Fox attended Burnaby Central Secondary School, and now has a theatre named for him at Burnaby South Secondary. At age 15, Fox starred in the Canadian television series Leo and Me, produced by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, and in 1979, at age 18, he moved to Los Angeles to further his acting career. Shortly after his marriage, he moved back to Vancouver. Fox was discovered by producer Ronald Shedlo and made his American television debut in the television film Letters from Frank, credited under the name "Michael Fox." He intended to continue to use the name, but when he registered with the Screen Actors Guild, which requires unique registration names to avoid credit ambiguities , he discovered that Michael Fox, a veteran character actor, was already registered under the name. As he explained in his autobiography, Lucky Man: A Memoir and in interviews, he needed to come up with a different name. He did not like the sound of "Michael A. Fox" during a time when "fox" meant "attractive" and because his "A" sounded too much like the Canadian "eh?" He also didn't like the sound of "Andrew" or "Andy," so he decided to adopt a new middle initial and settled on "J," as a tribute to actor Michael J. Pollard. Fox's first feature film roles were Midnight Madness and Class of 1984 , credited in both as Michael Fox. Shortly afterward, he began playing "Young Republican" Alex P. Keaton in the show Family Ties, which aired on NBC for seven seasons from 1982â€“89. In an interview with Jimmy Fallon in April 2014, Fox stated he negotiated the role at a payphone at Pioneer Chicken. He received the role only after Matthew Broderick was unavailable. Family Ties had been sold to the television network using the pitch "Hip parents, square kids", with the parents originally intended to be the main characters. However, the positive reaction to Fox's performance led to his character becoming the focus of the show following the fourth episode. At its peak, the audience for Family Ties drew one-third of America's households every week. Fox won three Emmy awards for Family Ties in 1986, 1987, and 1988. He also won a Golden Globe Award in 1989. Brandon Tartikoff, one of the show's producers, felt that Fox was too short in relation to the actors playing his parents, and tried to have him replaced. Tartikoff reportedly said that "this is not the kind of face you'll ever find on a lunch-box." After his later successes, Fox presented Tartikoff with a custom-made lunch-box with the inscription "To Brandon: This is for you to put your crow in. Love and Kisses, Michael J." Tartikoff kept the lunch-box in his office for the rest of his NBC career. When Fox left the TV series Spin City, his final episodes made numerous allusions to Family Ties: Michael Gross portrays Mike Flaherty's therapist, and there is a reference to an off-screen character named "Mallory". Also, when Flaherty becomes an environmental lobbyist in Washington, D.C., he meets a conservative senator from Ohio named Alex P. Keaton, and in one episode Meredith Baxter played Mike's mother. As a result of working on Family Ties, as well as his acting in Teen Wolf and Back to the Future, Fox became a teen idol. The VH1 television series The Greatest later named him among their "50 Greatest Teen Idols."