Michael J. Fox may have announced his retirement from acting, but he shared he’s still open to returning to the screen for the right opportunity.
The Back to the Future actor recently told Entertainment Tonight that after he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease at age 29 in 1991, his goals in life pivoted from his career to his family. He didn’t publicly disclose his diagnosis until 1998.
“My biggest goal, I think, was to raise a family. We have four amazing kids, and that’s been the big thing,” Fox said, referencing his children, whom he shares with his wife Tracy Pollan. “And then the other is with the [Michael J. Fox] foundation.”
Fox revealed in 2020 that he was retiring from doing onscreen work after having been open about his struggles with his memory and remembering lines of dialogue.
However, he told ET that he isn’t completely against taking on another acting role “if something came up that I could put my realities into it — my challenges — if I could figure it out.”
Fox added that doing his 2023 Apple TV+ documentary Still “just happened” and ended up being a “big thrill,” so “if someone offers me a part, and I do it, and I have a good time, great.”
The Spin City actor has previously shared that he became selective when choosing projects later in his career due to his health battles. “When I did the spinoff from [The] Good Wife, which is [The] Good Fight, I couldn’t remember the lines. I just had this blank,” he said on Mike Birbiglia’s Working It Out podcast in 2022.
At the time, he noted that he had the “same problem” while filming Kiefer Sutherland’s show Designated Survivor. “It was this legal stuff, and I just couldn’t get it,” Fox recalled. “But what [was] really refreshing was I didn’t panic. I didn’t freak out. I just went, ‘Well, that’s that. Moving on. A key element of this process is memorizing lines, and I can’t do it.’”
Last year, Fox also told Empire Magazine that he felt a scene in Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood was also a sign for him to retire. “There’s a scene where Leonardo DiCaprio’s character can’t remember his lines anymore. He goes back to his dressing room, and he’s screaming at himself in the mirror, just freaking insane,” he told the outlet. “I had this moment where I was looking in the mirror and thought, ‘I cannot remember it anymore.’”
Fox ultimately made the decision that it was time to “move on” from acting, calling it a “peaceful” decision.
