"Back to the Future" star Michael J. Fox (61) reports in a new "People" interview about several terrible blows of fate that he has had to suffer in recent months. In September of this year, his mother Phyllis passed away at the age of 92, and the superstar of the 1980s and early 1990s broke a number of different bones in his body. The following is a recap of the Hollywood mime's long history of suffering.
As many may know, Fox has been suffering from Parkinson's disease since 1991. The first symptoms appeared during the shooting of "The Hard Way", which he covered up for years. In 1998 he made his illness public after the signs could no longer be concealed.
In 2020, Fox was forced to give up his acting career for good. Because in addition to tremor symptoms, his short-term memory was "over" due to Parkinson's disease, as he revealed in a previous "People" interview from 2020. On the set of the series "Designated Survivor" (2016-2019) with Kiefer Sutherland (55), Fox found that he simply could not remember his lines of dialogue.
"I couldn't concentrate on one line," he explained this week. "I didn't beat myself up about it. I couldn't do it, so I didn't do it anymore."
As of 2018, Fox suffered from other serious health issues. A tumor was discovered on his spine. "I was at risk of paraplegia if I hadn't had surgery," Fox said. A highly risky operation, since the operation had to be performed directly on the star's spinal cord. Although the surgery was successful, Fox had to go through four months of rehab to learn to walk again.
When this seemed to be over, the father of four, who has been happily married to his wife Tracy Pollan (62) since 1988, fell in his kitchen and broke his arm. "That was definitely my darkest moment," recalls the now 61-year-old in an interview. "I was freaking out. I was leaning against the wall in my kitchen waiting for the ambulance and I was like, 'This is it, I can't get any lower.' I questioned everything [...] There was no bright side to it, no positive perspective. Only regret and pain." The star's boundless optimism seemed broken.
Then in the past year there was another, terrible series of broken bones. "I broke my cheek, then my hand, then my shoulder, I got a new, artificial shoulder put in and I broke my right arm, then I broke my elbow," Fox said of his seemingly unbelievable recent tale of suffering.
After an operation on his broken hand, he also contracted an infection. The inability to use his hand eventually led to problems with his balance, which caused him to fall several times - until the death in September of his mother Phyllis, who Fox explained had always kept the family together in his youth.
However, the star does not seem to have completely lost its legendary optimism. "It's been a struggle but I'm happy," Fox said.
