Michael J. Fox, the actor, said his Parkinson’s disease has become more difficult to live with as time has passed, telling People in an interview published Wednesday, September 9, 2026: “Of course, things have gotten harder over the years.”

Fox, 65, made the comment on the same day he was named winner of the Lasker-Bloomberg Public Service Award. The citation honored him for “dispelling the stigma of the disease and spearheading a revolution in the world of Parkinson’s research.” A gala presentation of the award took place Thursday, September 17.

His symptoms include tremors and balance problems. He is now launching a campaign seeking a further $2.5 billion for Parkinson’s research.

“I’m privileged to commit my time and energy to bringing everything I’ve got to help cure this disease,” Fox added in the same People interview.

An Honor He Calls Humbling

The Lasker Awards are handed out annually for scientific research and public service, and 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 award caught his attention because its winners demonstrate what science can accomplish, and he called being counted among them 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.

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.

Foundation Has Funded Billions

Fox set up the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research in 2000. He hired Deborah W. Brooks to run it alongside him, and she is now the foundation’s co-founder and chief executive as well as his business partner of more than 25 years. Since then, the foundation’s research funding totals more than $3 billion.

Brooks said two decades of foundation-funded research have remade the global scientific picture. Almost nothing had reached human testing of any kind when the organization began, she said, and about 180 Parkinson’s drug programs were in human testing as of July.

“It’s a hard disease — the care is hard to get, it’s not easy at all,” Brooks told The Hollywood Reporter in July.

Fox says the foundation is driving toward a world without the disease, and that nobody can pinpoint when that will arrive — only that it will.

He has testified before the U.S. Senate without taking his medication, so lawmakers could see the disease’s physical effects unmasked. More than 20 years ago, he chose to put his name and face on Parkinson’s. He told People his celebrity could pull in attention and speed the foundation’s goals, and that as a patient he feels the same impatience as everyone else living with the disease.

Describing the shift in his relationship with fame, Fox told USA Today in July: “The point where it got boring and tedious turned into a lever to operate a much bigger machine.”

Back on Television in “Shrinking”

Fox returned to television for 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. The season aired in the winter.

His character has Parkinson’s. Fox has said the part lets him bring his own condition into the role rather than hide it, and that he found it hugely enjoyable to shoot.

At the Creative Arts Emmys on Sunday, September 6, Fox did not win outstanding guest actor in a comedy for “Shrinking.” The award went posthumously to actor Rob Reiner for “The Bear.” The other nominees in the category were Connor Storrie for “Saturday Night Live,” Brett Goldstein for “Shrinking,” Hamish Linklater for “Widow’s Bay” and Christopher McDonald for “Hacks.”

Fox has said he hopes to return for a fourth season.

He stepped back from acting in 2020, citing trouble memorizing lines and saying the era of long shooting days had ended for him. Six years into that break, he phoned Lawrence about getting back to work. Fox has said the return lengthened his life and kept it more interesting than he had expected, and he says he is not retired.

Doctors told him at his 1991 diagnosis that he had roughly another decade of work in front of a camera. He is still going about 25 years past that estimate.

Diagnosis Kept Secret for Years

The Lasker Foundation says Fox first noticed symptoms in 1990, at 29, and that a diagnosis of the incurable neurological disorder followed the next year. He kept quiet publicly for seven years, launching the sitcom “Spin City” while the diagnosis stayed secret, then disclosed it in 1998. Only 4 percent of people with the disease have the young-onset form.

Fox also got sober during those same private years, after turning to alcohol to numb the pain of the illness. He exited “Spin City” in 2000 after revealing the diagnosis — the same year he won an Emmy for the show.

He is now more than three decades past those first symptoms, still working and still raising money, convinced a cure is coming.

Fox has won five Emmys and four Golden Globes. He 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.” After leaving “Spin City,” he took guest turns on “Scrubs” and “The Good Wife.”

He received the Bob Hope Humanitarian Award at the Emmys on September 14, an honor the Television Academy announced in late July. Julianna Margulies, the presenter, handed him the trophy, and he drew a standing ovation. Accepting it, Fox said accepting Parkinson’s “didn’t mean I had to surrender to it.”

Fox is Canadian and spoke in July from his home on Long Island. He has four children with his wife, Tracy Pollan.