When the Back to the Future and Spin City actor was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease in 1991, he refused to let the condition cut his life or his career short. He kept acting, earned some Emmy Awards and Golden Globes statuettes, and most recently appeared on season 3 of Apple TV’s Shrinking with Harrison Ford. As the 65-year-old actor tells Esquire editor in chief Michael Sebastian in the latest episode of “What I’ve Learned,” his drive all stems from a quote his father told him when he left Canada to pursue acting in America: “Well, if you’re going to be a lumberjack, you might as well go to the goddamn forest.” Though Fox’s father, a former Canadian Armed Forces soldier, was likely talking about Hollywood, Fox says that he took his advice to mean that if you’re going to do anything in life—whether it be his acting, activism, or even his sheer optimism in the face of his disease—you better fully engage yourself in it.
Their whole life was just to have a nice life that didn’t leave anything exposed,” Fox continues. Why aren’t we sharing our information about it?” Elsewhere in the episode, Fox shares what he’s learned from Rush Limbaugh accusing him of faking his diagnosis, meeting Barack Obama before he was president, and raising roughly $3 billion for Parkinson’s research. You can watch the episode above, watch it on YouTube here, or listen to it on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.
And I realize now that I’m in this great position where I can have an effect on people’s lives.”
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