“Of course, things have gotten harder over the years,” actor Michael J. Fox, 65, said of Parkinson’s disease in an interview with People published on Wednesday, September 9, 2026. He spoke the same day he was named winner of the Lasker-Bloomberg Public Service Award, cited for “dispelling the stigma of the disease and spearheading a revolution in the world of Parkinson’s research.” The gala presentation is set for Thursday, September 17.
For Fox, the symptoms include tremors and balance problems, and he keeps handing his time and his name to the search for a cure. “I’m privileged to commit my time and energy to bringing everything I’ve got to help cure this disease,” he added.
A Diagnosis at 29
The Lasker Foundation says Fox first noticed symptoms in 1990, at 29, with a diagnosis of the incurable neurological disorder following the next year. He kept quiet publicly for seven years, launching the sitcom “Spin City” while the diagnosis stayed secret, then disclosed it in 1998. Only 4 percent of people with the disease have the young-onset form. Fox also got sober during those same private years, after turning to alcohol to numb the pain of the illness.
He exited “Spin City” in 2000 after revealing the diagnosis, the same year he won an Emmy for the show, and set up the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research. To run it alongside him, he hired Deborah W. Brooks, now the foundation’s co-founder and chief executive. Its research funding since then adds up to more than $3 billion. Fox has also testified before the U.S. Senate without taking his medication, so lawmakers could see the disease’s physical effects unmasked.
More than 20 years ago, he chose to put his name and his face on Parkinson’s. His celebrity could pull in attention and speed the foundation’s goals, he told People, and as a patient he feels the same impatience as everyone else living with the disease. He described that shift in his relationship with fame to USA Today in July: “The point where it got boring and tedious turned into a lever to operate a much bigger machine.”
The Push for Another $2.5 Billion
Fox is now launching a campaign that seeks a further $2.5 billion for Parkinson’s research. The foundation, he says, is driving toward a world without the disease, and nobody can pinpoint when that will arrive — only that it will.
Brooks, his business partner of more than 25 years, told The Hollywood Reporter in July: “It’s a hard disease — the care is hard to get, it’s not easy at all.” Two decades of foundation-funded research have remade the global scientific picture, she said: almost nothing had reached human testing of any kind when the organization began, while about 180 Parkinson’s drug programs were in human testing as of July.
Back on Set in “Shrinking”
Advocacy has not crowded acting out of his life. Fox came back to television for the third season of the Apple TV series “Shrinking,” which stars Harrison Ford and Jason Segel and comes from creator Bill Lawrence, his former “Spin City” colleague. His character has Parkinson’s — a part he has said lets him bring his own condition into the role rather than hide it, and one he found hugely enjoyable to shoot.
The season aired in the winter. At the Emmy ceremony on Sunday, September 6, Fox did not win outstanding guest actor in a comedy for “Shrinking”; the award went posthumously to Rob Reiner for “The Bear.” The other nominees in the category were Connor Storrie (“Saturday Night Live”), Brett Goldstein (“Shrinking”), Hamish Linklater (“Widow’s Bay”) and Christopher McDonald (“Hacks”). Fox has said he hopes to return for a fourth season.
He had stepped back from acting in 2020, citing trouble memorizing lines and saying the era of long shooting days had ended for him. Six years into that break, he phoned Lawrence about getting back to work. The return, he has said, lengthened his life and kept it more interesting than he had expected, and he says he is not retired. Doctors told him at his diagnosis in 1991 that he had roughly another decade of work in front of a camera; he is still going about 25 years past that estimate.
Joining the Lasker Roster
Handed out annually for scientific research and public service, the Lasker Awards are sometimes described as America’s Nobels. Bill and Melinda Gates, Anthony Fauci and Christopher Reeve are among the previous recipients of the public service prize. Fox said the award caught his attention because its winners demonstrate what science can accomplish, and he called being counted among them humbling. The honor belongs as much to the scientists and clinicians pursuing a cure, he said, and to the patients and families whose experience guides that work. In a statement, the Lasker Foundation said Fox and his organization have helped break down the stigma of the disease and led a transformation in Parkinson’s research.
The recognition arrives on a career already thick with trophies: five Emmys and four Golden Globes. Fox played Alex P. Keaton on NBC’s “Family Ties” from 1982 to 1989 and Marty McFly in the “Back to the Future” trilogy, and he appeared in “Teen Wolf” and “Bright Lights, Big City.” Guest turns on “Scrubs” and “The Good Wife” followed his departure from “Spin City.” As of late July, he was also in line to receive the Bob Hope Humanitarian Award at the Emmys.
Fox, a Canadian, spoke in July from his home on Long Island, and he has four children with his wife, Tracy Pollan. Now more than three decades past those first symptoms, he is still working and still raising money, convinced that a cure is coming.
