Michael J. Fox Is Back on Screen in "Shrinking," and His Reason Will Warm Your Heart

Michael J. Fox has never been far from our hearts, but he’s been off our screens for a while. Now he’s back in a big way on Apple TV’s“Shrinking,”playing a character named Gerry who, like Fox, lives with Parkinson’s disease. He told People that returning to acting was“insanely fun”because he didn’t have to pretend. He could just show up as himself and put how he really feels into every scene.

That’s a long way from where things stood a few years back. Fox retired from acting in 2000, then stepped back again in 2020 when he lost his ability to memorize lines, on top of tremors and balance issues. He was diagnosed with Parkinson’s in 1990 at just 29 years old and went public in 1997. The man whose whole career ran on memorizing scripts had that very thing taken from him. The“Shrinking”role earned him an Emmy nomination anyway.

These days Fox says the season of 12-hour workdays is behind him. His focus is the Michael J. Fox Foundation, which he founded in 2000, and he says the science is showing researchers are getting close to a world without Parkinson’s. If you or someone you love has walked this road, we’d like to hear from you. What has helped your family most?