Michael J. Fox gives Parkinson's a starring role in new sitcom

MICHAEL J. Fox has returned to full-time acting 13 years after he quit his role on the sitcom Spin City.

Michael J. Fox appears on Jimmy Fallon's program to promote his return to television.

ONE morning in 1990, shortly after the release of Back to the Future Part III, Michael J. Fox awoke in a Florida hotel suite. He'd been partying, but his hangover was not the focus of his attention. The little finger on his left hand was twitching and would not stop.

Fox - then 29 and Hollywood's favourite smart aleck - would eventually learn that he had an incurable, progressive brain disease. His doctors told him that his acting days were numbered: a decade at most.

Now, 23 years on, he's just torpedoed that prognosis with the first TV show to treat Parkinson's as fair game for comedy.

In The Michael J. Fox Show, he plays Mike Henry, a television news anchor who is talked into reviving his career after a hiatus enforced by Parkinson's.

It is Fox's first full-time acting gig since he quit his starring role on the hit sitcom Spin City 13 years ago, largely because he felt his symptoms had begun to impair his performances.

The new sitcom does not shy away from the disease. After Fox's character returns to his old job, his family sits down to a celebratory breakfast.

Parkinson's patients experience uncontrollable tremors. Fox slowly attempts to serve himself a ladle of scrambled eggs, a feat of dexterity that may or may not be beyond him.

All is silent - until his wife interrupts: "Can you not have a personal victory right now? We are starving." Fox, who is now 52, showed the same irreverence in an interview with Rolling Stone. He said that he did not find his symptoms distressing, but was aware that others do.

Sex, he revealed, was not a problem, although "it's always up in the air who will be the agent of motion". He speaks frankly about his past alcoholism and how he has been sober for 21 years - "My sobriety is old enough to drink".

He also recalled a recent event hosted by the Amazon chief executive, Jeff Bezos, where Fox tried clay-pigeon shooting.

"One of the greatest moments in my life was me with a cocked shotgun and a group of people looking at me going, 'What the f***?' I knew that when I pulled the skeet I'd be still and shoot it, and I did. I blew it out of the sky on the first shot."

The interview describes him as "something of a medical anomaly". After ten years or so, most Parkinson's patients become less responsive to the synthetic dopamine that can help to control tremors. However, Fox remains "highly responsive". Indeed, he has found a blend of medications have helped him to feel better than he did a decade ago.

After stepping back from acting, he turned his focus on The Michael J. Fox Foundation, which has now raised more than dollars 350 million for research into a Parkinson's cure.

That work cemented the public's admiration. In truth, however, reviews for his new sitcom were mixed. "The show is more concerned with making Henry a saint than it is with making him funny," said The New York Times.

T. Scott Gross, another Parkinson's sufferer, argued in a review that the show had "failed to introduce the audience to the difficulties of living with Parkinson's. I know, it was supposed to be a comedy but most comedy is built on tragedy and the stage was not properly set." It seems likely that Fox will weather the critics. "If I walked into a room with God or Buddha or Bill Gates or Sergey Brin or whoever could figure out a way to fix it for me, I don't think I'd do it," he told Rolling Stone. "Because I wouldn't have gone through what I've gone through and I wouldn't have had the experience I've had ... I can still do a show. So what have I lost?"