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Michael J. Fox (Michael Andrew Fox) (b. June 9, 1961) is an award-winning,
Canadian-born film and television actor. His best known roles include Marty McFly
from the Back to the Future trilogy (1985-1990); Alex P. Keaton from Family Ties
(1982-1989), for which he won three Emmy Awards and a Golden Globe Award; and Mike
Flaherty from Spin City (1996-2000), for which he won an Emmy, three Golden Globes,
and two Screen Actors Guild Awards.
Fox was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease in 1991, and disclosed his condition to
the public in 1998. As the symptoms of his disease worsened, he retired from
full-time acting in 2000.
Early life
Michael was born in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. The son of William and Phyllis Fox,
his family lived in various cities and towns across Canada because of his father's
career in the Canadian Forces. The family finally settled in Vancouver, British
Columbia, in the suburb of Burnaby when his father, William Fox, retired in
1971.
Fox co-starred in the Canadian television series Leo and Me at age 15 and in 1979
at 18 he moved to Los Angeles to pursue an acting career. He was "found" by
producer Ronald Shedlo and made his American television debut in the television
movie Letters from Frank and was credited under the name "Michael Fox". He intended
to continue to use the name, but when he registered with the Screen Actors Guild,
which does not allow duplicate 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, and in interviews,
he needed to come up with a different name. He did not like the sound of "Andrew"
or "Andy" Fox. He decided against using his middle initial because he didn't want
to fit into a Canadian stereotype, as in Michael "Eh?" Fox, and because he did not
want teen fan magazines referring to him as "Michael, A Fox!". He decided to adopt
a new middle initial and settled on "J" in reference to character actor Michael J.
Pollard. Sometimes he jokes that the J stands for "Jenius" or "Jenuine".
 Acting
career
Stardom did not come easily for Fox. Although he landed a
rapid succession of parts after Letters from Frank (in the films Midnight
Madness and Class of 1984 and in guest roles on Lou Grant and Trapper John
M.D.), he hit a dry spell. At one point the young actor was forced to sell off
pieces of his sectional couch, which actor Lance Guest purchased. Fox has
called this period his "macaroni days", presumably as opposed to "salad days",
jokingly referring to the fact that he ate so many macaroni and cheese dinners
(i.e., cheap meals since in Canada, "Kraft Dinner" is ubiquitous as food for
those on a limited budget).
Family
Ties
Doc Brown (Christopher Lloyd) and Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) from the movie Back
to the Future.Fox auditioned for the role of Alex P. Keaton, the arrogant,
wise-cracking Republican teenager on the television series Family Ties. The first
audition did not go very well, as creator Gary David Goldberg did not think he was
right for the part. But casting director Judith Weiner convinced Goldberg to give
Fox another shot. Goldberg had a change of heart at the next audition, but now Fox
faced opposition from NBC executive Brandon Tartikoff. Goldberg tried to convince
Tartikoff that Fox would be good for the role, and Tartikoff finally relented,
famously commenting, "Go ahead if you insist. But I'm telling you, this is not the
kind of face you'll ever see on a lunch box". A few years later, after Back to the
Future opened to big success, Tartikoff received a lunch box in the mail that had
Fox's picture on it. There was a note inside that read, "To Brandon: This is for
you to put your crow in. Love and Kisses, Michael J. Fox." Tartikoff kept the lunch
box in his office for the rest of his career.
Family Ties struggled out of the gate, barely getting renewed in its first season.
But in 1984, it was paired up with The Cosby Show on Thursday nights, and the two
shows ranked in the top two for the Nielsen ratings until 1987, when Family Ties
was moved to Sunday nights. Fox won three Emmy Awards and one Golden Globe for his
portrayal of Alex P. Keaton. A famous episode in 1987, called "My Name is Alex" was
directed like a theatrical play, with Alex seeing a psychiatrist to cope with the
death of his best friend. This episode was picked as the 68th best in television
history in a 1997 issue of TV Guide. In a 1999 issue, Alex P. Keaton was ranked #27
on their list of the 50 Greatest TV Characters Ever. Fox also met his future wife
Tracy Pollan, when she portrayed Alex's girlfriend Ellen Reed in the 1985–1986
season. The couple met again on the set of his 1988 movie, Bright Lights, Big
City.
Spin
City
Spin City was a sitcom that ran from 1996 to 2002 on ABC,
based on a fictional local government running New York City, originally
starring Fox as Mike Flaherty, the Deputy Mayor of New York. After leaving the
show, he was replaced by Charlie Sheen who portrayed the character Charlie
Crawford. Altogether 145 episodes were made (see list of episodes).
Other Notable
Roles
Some other notable productions Fox has been a part of
include the Back to the Future movies, Mars Attacks!, Teen Wolf, For Love or
Money, The Secret of My Success, The Frighteners and The American President
(film). He is also the voice of Stuart Little in the movies based on the
popular book by E. B. White, Chance in the Homeward Bound series, and Milo
Thatch in Atlantis: The Lost Empire.
In 2004, Fox guest starred in the comedy Scrubs as Dr. Kevin Casey, who suffered
from obsessive-compulsive disorder. In 2006, he appeared in four episodes of Boston
Legal as a lung cancer patient who used his influence in an experimental drug test
to ensure he received the real drug instead of a placebo. The producers brought him
back in a recurring role for season 3, beginning with the season premiere. Though
his character did not survive the season, Fox was nominated for an Emmy Award for
best guest appearance.
Private life, illness
and advocacy
Fox married actress Tracy Pollan on 16 July 1988 at West Mountain Inn in Arlington,
VT. The couple have four children: Samuel Michael (born May 30, 1989), twins
Aquinnah Kathleen and Schuyler Frances (born February 15, 1995), and Esmé Annabelle
(born November 3, 2001). Fox holds dual Canadian-U.S. citizenship.
The MJFF
logo.
The Team Fox logo.Although symptoms of the disease started to show in 1990 while
shooting the movie Doc Hollywood , in 1991 he was diagnosed with young-onset
Parkinson's disease, but didn't go public until 1998. Since then he has been a
strong advocate of Parkinson's disease research, especially embryonic stem cell
research, which many in the scientific community believe may one day help sufferers
of Parkinson's and other debilitating illnesses. His foundation, The Michael J. Fox
Foundation, was created to help advance this research.
In 1998 the Alberta native was honoured with a star on Canada's Walk of Fame.
In 2000, he announced that he would be retiring from the lead role of Spin City due
to his illness. (A new lead character was created for Fox's replacement, Charlie
Sheen.)
Michael is an outspoken Detroit Tigers fan, attending all 2006 World Series
games.
2006 political
advertisement controversy
In late October 2006, Fox appeared in a television campaign commercial, endorsing
Claire McCaskill, the Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate in Missouri and opposing
incumbent senator Jim Talent for his specific opposition to federal funding of
embryonic stem cell research. Fox also made similar ads in Wisconsin (supporting
Governor Jim Doyle) and in Maryland, endorsing senatorial candidate Congressman Ben
Cardin. All three of the endorsed politicians won their respective elections.
Conservative radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh caused controversy by claiming Fox
was "either off his medication or acting" in the ad for McCaskill, calling Fox
"really shameless". According to the Washington Post, Limbaugh also told his
listeners that Fox was "exaggerating the effects of the disease... He's moving all
around and shaking, and it's purely an act." Limbaugh later said he would apologize
to Fox "if I am wrong in characterizing his behavior on this commercial as an act.
. ." Elaine Richman, a neuroscientist in Baltimore who co-wrote Parkinson's Disease
and the Family offered the opinion that "Anyone who knows the disease well would
regard his movement as classic severe Parkinson's disease. Any other interpretation
is misinformed."
Fox responded to Limbaugh's comments, ". . .it's difficult for people who don't
have Parkinson's, or don't know about Parkinson's, to understand the symptoms and
the way they work and the way medication works. You get what you get on any given
day."
Fox on living with
Parkinson's disease
Parkinson's disease is a chronic neurological disorder which can be characterized
by a triad of symptoms: rigidity (specifically "leadpipe" and "cogwheeling"
rigidity), resting tremor, and bradykinesia (slow movement). At present, there is
no cure, but medications provide some relief from the symptoms. Fox manages his
symptoms using Sinemet, a commercial form of Levodopa (L-dopa). L-dopa treatment
decreases in effectiveness as it is used over a long period of time, so Fox, like
many PD sufferers, extends the life of its effectiveness by using it as little as
possible.
The cover of Michael J. Fox's first book, Lucky Man.In his memoir, Lucky Man, Fox
wrote that he did not take his medication prior to his testimony before the Senate
Appropriations Subcommittee in 1998. "I had made a deliberate choice to appear
before the subcommittee without medication. It seemed to me that this occasion
demanded that my testimony about the effects of the disease, and the urgency we as
a community were feeling, be seen as well as heard. For people who had never
observed me in this kind of shape, the transformation must have been
startling."
Source : Some of the information on this page came
from a Wikipedia article and is licensed under the GNU Documentation
License. ©2008 www.geneticmatrix.com.
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Michael J.
Fox - Generator - Biography
