PARK CITY, Utah — A powerful new documentary goes inside Michael J. Fox’s decades-long struggle with Parkinson’s disease, and depicts the “Back to the Future” star’s enormous optimism in the face of hardship.
His big break was at 21 years old playing Alex P. Keaton on the TV series “Family Ties,” which then helped net him the enduring role of Marty McFly in the “Back To The Future” trilogy. For a week in 1985, his movies “Back to the Future” and “Teen Wolf” were, respectively, the No. 1 and No. 2 movies at the domestic box office.
He kept the diagnosis secret for seven years, popping dopamine pills to calm early symptoms and always carried props in his left hand on-screen to hide the shaking. In retrospect, footage from his projects at the time lay bare the stress the secret was putting him through. He dealt with his silence by using booze.
Sitting on the beach with his 33-year-old son Sam, one of three children he shares with wife and former “Family Ties” co-star Tracy Pollan, Fox asks, “Do you feel like you have a 90-year-old dad? Because I don’t feel old.”Johnny Oleksinski