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" Good Housekeeping So let&amp;#039;s talk about your new show on NBC: It&amp;#039;s about a guy who leaves his job because he has Parkinson&amp;#039;s. After five years, he tells his family he&amp;#039;s going back to work, and they essentially say, &amp;quot;Don&amp;#039;t let the door hit you on the way out.&amp;quot; How much of it is true to your life? Michael J. Fox It&amp;#039;s pretty true; the names were changed to protect the innocent. In the show, my character realizes that he&amp;#039;s not doing what he loves and he has no good reason for it. I kind of felt that way, too; beyond The Good Wife and other things, I thought there was a place for me on television. GH Just for argument&amp;#039;s sake, maybe a reason not to do it would be that carrying a TV show is a hugely physically and mentally demanding thing.  MJF A life well lived is demanding and exhausting and tiring; it was already that way without the element of work, so you could say that this job could be the straw that breaks the camel&amp;#039;s back \u2014 but it could also be the needle in a haystack; it just gets lost in the mass of everything else. And there&amp;#039;s the enjoyment that it gives me. It&amp;#039;s structured differently than, say, Spin City, where I was much more hands-on. There, I was involved in hiring the wardrobe people and in negotiating with the crew and with the network to get budgets approved. Now I&amp;#039;m much more passive on those things, so I&amp;#039;m not dealing with the frustrating, energy-sapping stuff\u2026being nibbled to death by ducks. I&amp;#039;m duck-repellent now. GH Did you sense that Tracy and the kids wanted you to go back to work?  MJF The kids were growing up. My two middle daughters just graduated from high school, and my son is out of college and he&amp;#039;s working. My little one is 11, but she&amp;#039;s very independent \u2014 I get a lot from the time I spend with her, and she gets a lot from the time she spends by herself. So it was a good time in that sense. GH Was there anything your family told you was off-limits in terms of material for the show? MJF No, because it&amp;#039;s all the essence of things. For instance, on the show, my TV family talks about how I always say, &amp;quot;A lady had a baby in a tree,&amp;quot; which is based on a story about a woman in Mozambique whose village flooded. She was pregnant and she was going into labor, so to save her baby, she climbed into a tree and gave birth. That stuck with me, and that image has become a kind of shorthand for our family. If my kids come to me with some complaint, I&amp;#039;ll say [to put it in perspective], &amp;quot;A lady had a baby in a tree \u2014 whaddya got?&amp;quot; And that&amp;#039;s in the show. GH Did anybody tell you not to do the show? What did your doctors say? MJF It&amp;#039;s very subjective, your experience with this condition. I&amp;#039;ve had it for 20 years now. The rate at which I&amp;#039;m finding ways to cope with it, to medicate it, and to apply exercise and positive thinking to it has surpassed its own march toward awfulness. I&amp;#039;m ahead of it. It&amp;#039;s a presence, and it&amp;#039;s there, and it takes a toll. Like I&amp;#039;ve said, it&amp;#039;s the gift that keeps on taking. But it&amp;#039;s not enough to stop me from living my life, and I&amp;#039;ve managed to outperform it to this day. Someone asked me why I was doing the show, and I said, &amp;quot;Why can&amp;#039;t I?&amp;quot; My message is this: You know your situation. Don&amp;#039;t let others project onto you what they think you should be feeling. By judging my experience, I just thought, I&amp;#039;m ready to do this. GH You&amp;#039;ve already gotten a little criticism about the show \u2014 people who think you were insensitive. It&amp;#039;s surprising, actually. MJF That&amp;#039;s hilarious. I can characterize my situation in whatever way I want to. And it is funny. Certainly there are things that are very hard about it, and this disease takes a terrible toll on people. But on the other hand, it&amp;#039;s funny: the idea that my character is passing a spoonful of scrambled eggs \u2014 he&amp;#039;s trying to prove a point to himself about what he can do \u2014 and his family is hungry and they just want to eat. I mean, that&amp;#039;s funny. I look at life with humor and say, &amp;quot;What&amp;#039;s the good in this? What&amp;#039;s the best I can take from this?&amp;quot; And usually the best I can take out of a situation is what makes me laugh. The show is as much about anyone who deals with any hardship or challenge as it is about a guy who has Parkinson&amp;#039;s. I really believe, let it be what it is. Accept it; know what it is you&amp;#039;re dealing with. And if you do that honestly, and you really look at it and you&amp;#039;re not afraid, then you&amp;#039;ll see how much space there is around it and how much room there is for other things, other attitudes, and other experiences. GH What do you want viewers to take away from the show? MJF Whatever your challenge is, everyone else has one, too. Parkinson&amp;#039;s affects the way you present yourself to the world. Better put, it affects the way people see you. But that only matters to the extent that you care about it. I mean, I care about how I treat people, but I don&amp;#039;t care about how I look to people. Forget vanity; we spend so much time worrying about that stuff. Parkinson&amp;#039;s is a condition that affects the way you communicate and move. We attach shame to it, and there&amp;#039;s no shame to it at all. You know, one of the reasons I started golfing in my 40s with Parkinson&amp;#039;s is because it&amp;#039;s the most optimistic thing you can do. It&amp;#039;s a really hard game. No one ever gets it right. But there&amp;#039;s a kind of a shame involved in it, even when you watch the pros. You naturally say to yourself, Oh, you missed that putt, like you stole an orange from the store. One of the reasons I like playing golf is that I have no shame in it. When I hit a shot, it&amp;#039;s like I have a foot on each platform of two subway cars and they&amp;#039;re moving independently and I&amp;#039;m trying to hit a ball. So, I don&amp;#039;t feel embarrassed. I don&amp;#039;t attach any feeling of inferiority or of being damaged or of being frail or of being fragile. That&amp;#039;s other people&amp;#039;s perceptions. GH Right, that leaves you free to just have fun. When faced with the level of challenges you&amp;#039;ve been faced with, I think as humans, we reflexively tend to think, Why me? Why does this happen to me? That has never been your M.O., right? In fact, you&amp;#039;ve said that in some ways your diagnosis has made you a stronger, better person. MJF It has. Totally. GH Were you born this way, or did you cultivate this? MJF My parents were that special generation born in the Great Depression and raised in World War II. They knew what challenge was; they knew about inequity. And so growing up, they were really practical people, but they approached everything with humor. My dad was a tough guy. He was in the army for 25 years and a police dispatcher for 15. He passed away young, in his early 60s. He had a hard life, so I was happy that my siblings and I had success \u2014 it was great for my father to see; it gave him the feeling that he had accomplished something, and he truly did. I get that sense of having a real appreciation for what it is to put something into life and get something out of it. And also there have been no complaints and no excuses. If I show up to do a day&amp;#039;s work, you&amp;#039;ve got a right to expect that I&amp;#039;ll do it. And I get pleasure out of that. You don&amp;#039;t have to look at me and say, &amp;quot;We&amp;#039;ll make allowances. We&amp;#039;ll forgive less than a full effort because he has this condition.&amp;quot; Because I don&amp;#039;t feel entitled. Anything good that&amp;#039;s happened, I appreciate. And I don&amp;#039;t have resentments. I&amp;#039;m not jealous. I don&amp;#039;t have any of those feelings, so it makes life really easy. It creates a lot of space. GH That makes you pretty unusual. MJF I don&amp;#039;t have a lot of issues that others have. I realize that for some, this disease is a real heartbreaker and a real challenge, and I don&amp;#039;t belittle that. But if I&amp;#039;m portraying my experience and I want to entertain people, I&amp;#039;m going to want to select the most entertaining, funny part of my experience and share it. I do feel that some of the people who are having a tough time, if they could allow it to only take up the space it takes up and allow it to be only as big as it is, they&amp;#039;d find room to laugh. GH Do you ever have days when you don&amp;#039;t feel like being positive? MJF I have days when I&amp;#039;m tired \u2014 days when I want to turn on a classic-movie channel, hang out, and eat chocolate. But I don&amp;#039;t look at that as being negative or depressed; I look at it as, &amp;quot;You&amp;#039;ve got to do that every now and then.&amp;quot; GH Tell me a little bit about the Michael J. Fox Foundation and the work you&amp;#039;re doing now. MJF I was there yesterday, and it&amp;#039;s really gratifying because it&amp;#039;s big \u2014 it takes up the whole floor of an office building now. We have 80-something employees, and 80-something percent of everything we take in goes directly to research. The work we&amp;#039;re doing is on a lot of different levels. We&amp;#039;re trying to find a way to repair the gene [thought to be involved in Parkinson&amp;#039;s], the part of the brain that&amp;#039;s damaged, and to help it heal itself. And we&amp;#039;re working to find biomarkers so we can identify the disease earlier \u2014 because right now the only way to diagnose it is when it&amp;#039;s already really manifest, and by then so much damage has been done to the brain. We&amp;#039;re also involved with pharmaceutical companies. For instance, dealing with medication and its side effects, like dyskinesia, which is why I do some of the movements I do \u2014 although it&amp;#039;s better now than it was a few years ago. So we&amp;#039;re covering all kinds of bases. GH How do you find the drive to do all this? Tell me about the spiritual side of your life. Obviously, you tap into something that gives you a lot of strength. Has that shifted over time? MJF This positivity that I feel is based on a belief \u2014 and it&amp;#039;s shapeless and amorphous. But I know it&amp;#039;s better to be good than to be bad. It&amp;#039;s better to ponder the possible than to rue the impossible. There&amp;#039;s the saying, &amp;quot;My happiness grows in direct proportion to my acceptance and in inverse proportion to my expectations.&amp;quot; And that&amp;#039;s what I live by. Next:   GH Let&amp;#039;s talk about you and Tracy for a minute. You&amp;#039;ve obviously been through a lot together. You&amp;#039;ve raised four kids, you&amp;#039;ve dealt with this disease; you&amp;#039;ve had fantastic success, but also challenges. How do you two deal with tough times?  MJF It depends on who it&amp;#039;s tough for. When we have fights, it&amp;#039;s usually one or the other of us saying, &amp;quot;I can&amp;#039;t believe you&amp;#039;re not letting me off the hook here. Let me off the hook.&amp;quot; And we do let each other off the hook. That&amp;#039;s all you have to say: &amp;quot;You&amp;#039;re not acknowledging that I&amp;#039;m doing the best I can.&amp;quot; I say that because that&amp;#039;s rare \u2014 90 percent of the time, it&amp;#039;s, &amp;quot;I know you&amp;#039;re doing the best you can. And I&amp;#039;m doing the best I can.&amp;quot; You know, raising four kids has not been an extra challenge because of my situation; it&amp;#039;s a challenge because it&amp;#039;s just a freaking challenge! It&amp;#039;s hard, and we don&amp;#039;t have to make things any harder just to prove a point or to set one of us up to be the hero. In a happy marriage, there are no heroes. It&amp;#039;s gotta be a team all the way. It&amp;#039;s funny; the episode of the show we&amp;#039;re doing right now is called &amp;quot;Teammates,&amp;quot; and it&amp;#039;s about having each other&amp;#039;s back. There&amp;#039;s a scene where we get in the elevator of our building and someone&amp;#039;s rude, and my TV wife calls the person out on it. And I&amp;#039;m like, &amp;quot;Do we have to do this? Nothing good is going to happen here. You&amp;#039;re just going to make a point; you&amp;#039;re going to feel better, but\u2026&amp;quot; and that&amp;#039;s like Tracy and me. GH She would do that in an elevator. MJF Yeah. She would say, &amp;quot;Excuse me,&amp;quot; and I would be like, &amp;quot;What comes of this?&amp;quot; But it&amp;#039;s great, because she&amp;#039;ll fix an issue. She has an incredible mind for detail and for organization. GH What would she say your best and worst traits are? And what are hers? MJF Her best trait is that she&amp;#039;s so loyal and wants to do the right thing and be there for people. She has great integrity. She doesn&amp;#039;t cheat \u2014 in any sense. (I just realized what that sounds like; hopefully she doesn&amp;#039;t do that, either!) She also has a real understanding of who I am. It surprises me. She&amp;#039;ll say, &amp;quot;Well, you think this,&amp;quot; and I&amp;#039;ll say, &amp;quot;I didn&amp;#039;t even know I thought that. How did you know?&amp;quot; I think what she&amp;#039;d say about me is that I&amp;#039;m loyal, and I make it hard for people to feel down around me. I think she appreciates the way I am with the kids and the kind of father I am. It&amp;#039;s just a good marriage. GH If you were giving a newlywed the kernel of advice that you think is most important, what would you say? MJF Don&amp;#039;t go into it with an idea of what it should be. Let it be what it is. We get so intent on posing this idea \u2014 saying, &amp;quot;I know what I want from this marriage. I want a woman to cook me dinner every night, and I want whatever I want.&amp;quot; But those &amp;quot;I want&amp;#039;s&amp;quot; get you nothing. It&amp;#039;s like the song: You get what you need. And if you don&amp;#039;t recognize your needs, then you&amp;#039;re not going to get anywhere. GH True. And on the subject of life lessons, how about parenthood \u2014 what is the most important thing you want to teach your kids? MJF Well, I&amp;#039;m not going to be able to teach them my resiliency or my cockroach toughness. GH Because of the privileged way they have grown up? MJF Yes. But what I have taught them is an appreciation for their life, respect for other people, and a curiosity about what&amp;#039;s possible and what they can do. And that&amp;#039;s enough. They don&amp;#039;t have to take a beating just because I took a beating, and they don&amp;#039;t have to dance on the roof of a limo just because I did. They can have their own experience and learn from that. My littlest one, Esm\u00E9, is the most like me. She&amp;#039;s always reading a book, editing a movie on her computer, or dressing up; when we go on vacation, she writes a book about what she has seen. She&amp;#039;s got that curiosity and that joy that I had, in spite of some of the things I&amp;#039;ve had to deal with. And I still have that now. That&amp;#039;s really what it comes down to, joy. I said to the writers on the show, &amp;quot;Whatever you do, write me joy, because I play joy well.&amp;quot; Alex [on Family Ties] was most fun when he was experiencing joy. For Marty [in the Back to the Future movies], it was his joy, his excitement. That&amp;#039;s really the emotion I&amp;#039;m most at home in. Not that I can&amp;#039;t experience sadness or desire or whatever. I&amp;#039;m just most at home in joy. GH Let&amp;#039;s look at another side of that. More than 20 years ago, your doctor said you&amp;#039;d be able to work only 10 more years. So now you&amp;#039;re 52, about to air a new show \u2014 you&amp;#039;ve been working basically all this time. How does it feel to prove that guy wrong? MJF I give the guy a hard time sometimes because I did feel that my diagnosis was kind of terse and scary. But I feel he had to level with me. And I am unusual in the things I&amp;#039;ve been able to do, so I think a part of me did take it as a gauntlet thrown down. I&amp;#039;ve never been one to back away from a challenge. When I was a kid, if we were playing football or something, I&amp;#039;d be picked last because I was so small. I&amp;#039;d always take a certain pride in the fact that that&amp;#039;d be the last time they&amp;#039;d ever pick me last, because I&amp;#039;d make them look stupid for not realizing [what I was made of]. A bit of that &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;ll show you&amp;quot; energy was involved when I got the diagnosis. The way I looked at it was, I&amp;#039;d had the disease long before I was diagnosed, and I was able to work and do a lot of things then. So what I had to fear was not that I was going to get something new, but that it would be different from what I had experienced. In that way, it was like: You&amp;#039;re in the middle of the road and a bus is coming. It&amp;#039;s going to hit you at some point, but you don&amp;#039;t know when or how hard. You just know you can&amp;#039;t get out of the road. Then life went on. Though I only had an 11th-grade education, I was writing books and being a political activist for a group of people who didn&amp;#039;t have an advocate or whose advocates couldn&amp;#039;t actually get out there and press the point. And I realized my acting was better because I wasn&amp;#039;t relying on stuff I couldn&amp;#039;t do anymore. I had to find new things to do and new ways to approach the work, and I found myself playing a villain and enjoying that. GH The character you play on The Good Wife \u2014 that was really brave and innovative. We all love to hate this guy. He has a disability and he uses it basically for forces of evil. MJF To manipulate. GH He&amp;#039;s totally manipulative. I think it&amp;#039;s great to show that being sick doesn&amp;#039;t suddenly make you into a good person. Let me ask you this: If you could go back and change one thing in your life, what would it be?  MJF I would have liked to have gone to college. But when it comes down to it, I wouldn&amp;#039;t change anything because I wouldn&amp;#039;t want to influence the series of events that led me here. GH Who, if anyone, inspires you? MJF A lot of people inspire me, but the first image that comes to my head is Bruce Springsteen at the Apollo Theater last year \u2014 he was 60-however-many years old, and he was standing at the edge of a balcony and belting out a song, and I just felt, Wow. You can only do that because you love what you do and you&amp;#039;re great at it. It&amp;#039;s an unnameable force that allows him to do that. Other people who inspire me are the classics: Martin Luther King Jr., John F. Kennedy, Gandhi, and Nelson Mandela. But my kids inspire me, too \u2014 to be better, to be present, and to really think before I say something. Tracy also inspires me to be better. So I guess what I&amp;#039;m saying is, I&amp;#039;m inspired by people who are their true selves and who use that to do good. GH Which is a very inspiring concept. Thank you so much for your time. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.goodhousekeeping.com/life/inspirational-stories/interviews/a13835/michael-j-fox/>