Photo: Terry Wyatt/Getty Images
Michael J. Fox, who for more than 30 years has been living with Parkinson’s disease, an incurable degenerative disorder of the central nervous system, doesn’t like to dwell on what might happen tomorrow.
The actormade headlines earlier this monthwhen he candidly spoke about living with the disease. “I’m not gonna lie. It’s getting harder. Every day it’s tougher,” he toldCBS Sunday Morning’s Jane Pauley.
“You don’t die from Parkinson’s. You die with Parkinson’s. I’m not gonna be 80,” he added.
It’s a topic he touches on in his new documentaryStill: A Michael J. Fox Movie, which chronicles his childhood in Canada, his rise to stardom onFamily Ties, his diagnosis with Parkinson’s and his life today.
“If I’m here 20 years from now, I’ll either be cured or like a pickle,” he says in the movie with his characteristic sense of humor.
Elaborating on that sentiment to PEOPLE, Fox responds with another quip. “The average age of death is 77. It’s not that far out on a limb,” he says with a laugh.
Joking aside, Fox says he’s glad he’s been able to do as much as he has. “If you told me when I was 29 when they just diagnosed it, that at 61 I’d still be going at it with a film to promote, that life would be so full, I never would have guessed it,” he says.
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“I’m cautiously optimistic, but mostly optimistic, not so much cautious, as my family would say,” continues Fox, who shares four children, Sam, 33, twins Aquinnah and Schuyler, 28, and Esmé, 21, with his wife of 35 years,Tracy Pollan, 62.
The Emmy-winner says he asked his family for their blessing to let cameras into their lives. “They all gave me their permission. And then, at various times, they retracted their permission.”
Pollan, he notes, “is a much more private person, so I think it’s difficult for her.” Even so, she’s happy with the finished documentary. “The most important thing is she thinks it’s a true reflection of our lives and of me, and I think she likes it a lot.”
Later in the movie, the 5-foot-4 actor, who has recently broken several bones including his shoulder, elbow, arm and cheek, jokes, “Gravity is real, even if you’re only falling from my height.”
Scenes like that help viewers understand what he’s going through. “That’s my reality,” he says. “People always say to me, ‘Don’t fall down!’ Like it’s a choice. I just fall down! That’s my life. That’s my life in a nutshell.”
Fox says he gave the director full control over what to include: “I turned my life over to Davis Guggenheim. He picked the narrative he wanted to take.”
source: people.com
