The public has known about Michael J. Fox's diagnosis of Parkinson's disease for over 20 years, and now he is sharing details about how difficult things have become for him.
In his upcoming documentary "Still," viewers learn that while his tremors from the disease have been visible in his appearances, he is also in a lot of pain much of the time. In the film, he specifies, "I’m in intense pain. Each tremor is like a seismic jolt."
In an interview with The Times, he elaborated, saying, "It’s not so much pain from the movement, but from the not moving. It’s when you freeze, and in that freezing that not-movement becomes infused with all this energy and it becomes this burning, impending thing that never happens."
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He added, "I don’t want to get the violins out. I’ve broken my hand, my elbow, my humerus, my other humerus, my shoulder, my face and some other s--- too. And all that stuff is amplified by the electricity of the tremors. So, yes, it hurts a lot. But what you learn is that nobody gives a s---. It’s just life. It doesn’t matter. You suck it up and you move on. And there might be a story to tell in it. But only that. There’s no chit that you can present to a window for a refund."
While he said that his goal is to live his life with joy, "What has made my life richer and more authentic as time has gone on is being really honest about the pain, and what it really has taken, and what has been lost."
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Fox, 61, was diagnosed with Parkinson's at 29, meaning he has lived with the disease for over half of his life.
He made it clear that it is a real struggle in many ways, but that "the depression is [not] so deep that I’m going to injure myself … it always comes back to a place where I go, ‘Well, there’s more to celebrate in my life than there is to mourn.’ The pain speaks for itself. You either tolerate it or you don’t. And I’m not going anywhere."
Elsewhere in the interview, Fox discussed his remarkable rise to fame in the '80s and the hard partying that went with it.
"When I look at that period in the movie it just seems crazy. Look at all the girls I dated. Some of them I can’t even remember," he laughed. "I mean, I dated Susanna Hoffs from the Bangles, and I can’t even remember it. But that’s just an example. Stuff like that happened all the time."
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He recalled one memory in which "I sat next to Princess Diana during the world premiere of ‘Back to the Future’ and I had to pee. And that’s all I remember. I had just been told a whole list of things that I could and couldn’t do, like not speaking unless spoken to, and not standing unless she stands. And so I was thinking, ‘What kind of math do I have to do to go to the bathroom?’ I can’t say, ‘I’ve got to go to the loo!’ So I sat there in pain for the whole time. And that was kind of the formula for that part of my life."
He said, "As I tell the stories of my life I see the irony in them and the twisted metaphor. It can’t be as simple as just bleak. There has to be something to laugh about."
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"Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie" releases on Apple TV+ May 12.
