Michael J. Fox had stepped away from acting after Parkinson’s complications made long days and memorizing lines increasingly difficult. For years, it seemed like the ‘Back to the Future‘ star had accepted that chapter of his career was over.
Then ‘Shrinking‘ offered him something different: a role where he didn’t have to hide what he was going through.
Michael J. Fox Reveals Why ‘Shrinking‘ Changed His Mind
Fox stepped back from acting in 2020 after noticing that his ability to remember lines was fading. His last on-camera performance before ‘Shrinking‘ came that same year, when he appeared in two episodes of ‘The Good Fight‘. Six years later, the Apple TV series gave him a reason to return.
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“A new variable emerged: my ability to memorize lines,” Fox told PEOPLE while explaining why he initially walked away. “There’s a time for everything, and the time for 12-hour workdays was behind me.”
Shrinking, however, gave Fox a character that worked with his reality rather than asking him to work around it. “This new character allows me to show up on set as myself,” he explained. Fox could simply “use how I feel on any given day and channel it into the scene.”
Michael J. Fox Previously Struggled To Memorize Lines
Fox had already spoken about the moment he realized acting was becoming much harder. While working on The Good Fight, the actor had to handle long pieces of legal dialogue, and remembering them became a major challenge. “I’d have to read screeds of legalese. I couldn’t get it,” he recalled.
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A scene from Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, featuring Leonardo DiCaprio’s character struggling with the same issue, hit particularly close to home. “I had just seen one of my favorite movies, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, and there was a great scene where Leo [DiCaprio] goes back in his room and just lays into himself in the mirror and just goes insane and drinking and crying at his lack of ability to memorize lines and I found myself, similarly, in front of a mirror and I went: Meh! I can’t do it. I can’t do this anymore.”
Returning with Shrinking also meant Fox got to work alongside Harrison Ford, an experience he described as “insanely fun.” Ford had equally warm things to say about his new co-star during an April panel for the series.
Harrison Ford Praises Michael J. Fox As He Pushes For A Parkinson’s Cure
“He is an incredibly thoughtful, compassionate, wise, gentle person, with great power,” Ford said of Fox. “He’s been very generous in extending friendship to me. I really didn’t know him, so I was a little nervous about meeting him. But he was so generous and kind to me that it gave me a degree of confidence, which is all you have to work with.”
Away from acting, Fox continues his work through the Michael J. Fox Foundation and remains hopeful about finding a cure for Parkinson’s. “The Foundation’s work is about driving toward a world without Parkinson’s. We don’t know exactly when it’ll happen, but it will happen,” he told PEOPLE. “Science is hard. It’s astronomically expensive. It takes time and collaboration. But as long as we stay focused, we stay hopeful, we’ll get there. And the science is showing we’re getting close.”
Fox also pointed to the progress researchers are already making. “We’re seeing more research breakthroughs every year, new drugs to help patients live well, and better tools to help scientists move faster. It’s heartening progress. And we’re going to stay on it till the job is done.” His return to ‘Shrinking‘ may mark his first on-camera role in six years, but Fox is approaching it on terms that work for him now.
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