Michael J. Fox recently opened up about the challenges his wife, Tracy Pollan, faced after he went public with his Parkinson’s diagnosis.
For those unaware, the 65-year-old Canadian-American actor and activist was diagnosed with young-onset Parkinson’s disease at the age of just 29 in 1991. He informed his fans about his health scare in 1998 before founding The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research in 2000. It is now the world’s largest nonprofit funder of Parkinson’s drug development.
In his interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Fox talked about difficulties his wife Pollan had to face after he announced his diagnosis.
He told the outlet, “It was hell on Tracy, it was really hard on her — and it still is because it’s always changing. But I said to her, ‘I have to go all the way here. No half measures.’”
“I started to understand what it was like for these people who didn’t have the options or the choices I had, didn’t have the connections and the reason to be optimistic. I needed to normalize it and just be that all the time. I said, ‘I have to not hide this. F****** vanity,’” the Teen Wolf star stated.
Fox went on to share that his decision to go public with his diagnosis came as a surprise for him and for those who were battling with the disease.
“I thought, ‘Well, f**** you! I have Parkinson’s and you’re celebrating.’ I got it. People back then would never in a million years tell you they had Parkinson’s,” he recalled.
It is pertinent to mention that Michael J. Fox and Tracy Pollan, who married in July 1988 after meeting on the set of the hit NBC sitcom Family Ties, share four children together.
