Actor Michael J. Fox says living with Parkinson’s disease has grown harder over the years, even as he pours his time and his name into the search for a cure. Fox, 65, spoke in an interview with People published on 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.” The prize is presented at a gala on Thursday, September 17.
“Of course, things have gotten harder over the years,” Fox said of the disease, whose symptoms for him include tremors and balance problems. 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
Fox first noticed symptoms in 1990, at 29, according to the Lasker Foundation, and was diagnosed the following year with the incurable neurological disorder. For seven years he said nothing publicly, starting the sitcom “Spin City” while the diagnosis stayed secret, and disclosed it in 1998. Young-onset Parkinson’s affects only 4 percent of people with the disease. During those same private years, Fox also got sober, having turned to alcohol to numb the pain of the illness.
He left “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, hiring Deborah W. Brooks, now the foundation’s co-founder and chief executive, to run it with him. The organization has since funded more than $3 billion in research. Fox has also testified before the U.S. Senate without taking his medication so lawmakers could see the disease’s physical effects unmasked.
He decided more than 20 years ago to attach his name and his face to Parkinson’s, telling People that his celebrity could draw attention and speed the foundation’s goals, and that as a patient he feels the same impatience as everyone else living with the disease. Fox described that shift in his relationship with fame to USA Today in July: “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 is launching a campaign seeking a further $2.5 billion for Parkinson’s research. He says the foundation is driving toward a world without the disease, and that nobody can pinpoint when that will arrive — only that it will.
Brooks, Fox’s business partner of 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.” She said two decades of foundation-funded research have remade the global scientific picture: when the organization began, almost nothing had reached human testing of any kind, and about 180 Parkinson’s drug programs were in human testing as of July.
Back on Set in “Shrinking”
The advocacy has not pushed acting out of his life. Fox returned to television in the third season of the Apple TV series “Shrinking,” which stars Harrison Ford and Jason Segel and comes from creator Bill Lawrence, his former “Spin City” colleague. Fox plays a character with Parkinson’s, a part he has said lets him bring his own condition into the role rather than hide it, and one he found hugely enjoyable to shoot. The season aired in the winter and earned Fox a 2026 Emmy nomination. He has said he hopes to return for a fourth season.
Fox stepped back from acting in 2020, citing trouble memorizing lines and saying the era of long shooting days had ended for him. The break ran six years before he phoned Lawrence about getting back to work. He has credited the return with lengthening his life and keeping it more interesting than he had expected, and he says he is not retired. When he was diagnosed in 1991, doctors told him he had roughly another decade of work in front of a camera; he is still going about 25 years past that estimate.
Joining the Lasker Roster
The Lasker Awards, handed out annually for scientific research and public service, are sometimes described as America’s Nobels. Previous recipients of the public service prize include Bill and Melinda Gates, Anthony Fauci and Christopher Reeve. Fox said the prize stood out to him because its winners demonstrate what science can accomplish, and he described being counted among them as humbling. He said the honor belongs as much to the scientists and clinicians pursuing a cure, and to the patients and families whose experience guides that work. The Lasker Foundation said in a statement that 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. Fox has won five Emmys and four Golden Globes. He played Alex P. Keaton on NBC’s “Family Ties” from 1982 to 1989, starred as Marty McFly in the “Back to the Future” trilogy and appeared in “Teen Wolf” and “Bright Lights, Big City.” After leaving “Spin City,” he turned up as a guest on “Scrubs” and “The Good Wife.” As of late July, he was also in line to receive the Bob Hope Humanitarian Award at the Emmys.
Fox, who is Canadian and spoke in July from his home on Long Island, has four children with his wife, Tracy Pollan. More than three decades after his first symptoms, he is still working and still raising money, convinced that a cure is coming.
