Michael J. Fox was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in 1991 with only family members like wife Tracy Pollan, knowing at first. Photo: TNS
Michael J. Fox opens up about his decades-long battle with Parkinson’s disease in a new trailer for the eagerly anticipated documentary Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie.
Directed by Academy Award-winner Davis Guggenheim, the film tells the life story of the beloved Canadian American actor, known for roles in Family Ties, Back To The Future and Spin City.
Archival backstage footage from his film and TV projects are juxtaposed with vintage photos, interviews and scripted recreations of key moments from Fox’s life – including the moment he discovered Parkinson’s symptoms at the height of his fame.
“I woke up and I noticed my pinkie auto-animated. Parkinson’s disease,” the 61-year-old Emmy Award winner shares in the trailer, which was released Thursday (April 6). “I told (my wife) Tracy the news. ‘In sickness and in health,’ I remember her whispering. No one outside of my family knew.”
Fox was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in 1991 but didn’t reveal it to the public until 1999.
In 2000, he founded the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research, of which he sits on the board of directors. To date, the foundation has funded more than US$1bil in global research programmes.
In the trailer for Still, director Guggenheim – known for the documentaries An Inconvenient Truth, Waiting For Superman and He Named Me Malala – is heard off-camera saying the “sad-sack story is: Michael J. Fox gets this debilitating disease, and it crushes him,” before the subject says: “Yeah, that’s boring.”
“I’m a tough son of a bitch,” Fox states confidently.
Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie begins streaming May 12 on Apple TV+. – New York Daily News/Tribune News Service
