In the early 1990s, Michael J. Fox seemed to embody momentum itself. He was fast-talking, physically precise, and relentlessly energetic, a performer whose timing depended on every muscle firing exactly when it should. Audiences saw confidence and control. What they could not see was the quiet disruption beginning inside his body.
In 1991, when Fox was just 29 years old, a subtle twitch in his finger led to a diagnosis that would alter the course of his life: young-onset Parkinson’s disease. For most people, Parkinson’s appears later in life. For someone still building a career defined by movement and physical comedy, the news was devastating. The condition, caused by the gradual loss of dopamine-producing neurons in the brain, brings tremors, muscle rigidity, slowed movement, and problems with balance. It is progressive and incurable. For Fox, it meant confronting a future radically different from the one he had imagined. Continue reading…
