Michael J. Fox is a Canadian and American activist and retired actor. He was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in 1998. He founded the Michael J. Fox Foundation to find a cure and for research. He played the lead in the NBC Michael J Fox show, but soon he quit due to health degradation.
Fox won five Emmy Awards, Four Golden Globe Awards and was inducted into Canada’s Hall of Fame. He has done a charity performance for his foundation Michael J Fox Research, and the performance is called Back to the Future for Parkinson’s Research.
He was in the last mild stage of the disease. He won three Emmy Awards for Family Ties. He starred in Spin City and voiced Stuart Little.
At 18, he moved to Los Angeles and landed a few television roles, but soon he had to live on Macaroni and Cheese. He also suffered mental illness, a broken face, a broken shoulder, and personal losses in his ill health condition. Read more about why his disease made him leave Spin City.
Why Michael J. Fox left Spin City
He left the show because of worsening Parkinson’s disease symptoms, and the show removed his character Mike by making him resign. Charlie Sheen replaced him as Charlie Crawford for the final two seasons.
After Spin City, he focused more on advocacy and fundraising for research of the disease instead of full-time acting. Fox said in 1998 that he had contracted the neurological disorder, and that would be the final season for the highly rated series.
He couldn’t be more proud of the show, but he knew that it would be better if he focused more on his health and the research. He didn’t quit acting or producing, but he took a break from weekly TV series.
The reactions have been mixed, and there’s no speculation about the Back To The Future actor’s acting career future decisions. He left Spin City because the symptoms had been affecting his performance.
Why Michael J. Fox left Spin City? (Credits: DreamWorks Television)
Michael’s Parkinson’s
The doctors told him that he had no more than a decade left for his acting career. His disease had given him more focus on his career.
He had been shooting the movie ‘Doc Hollywood’ and sought medical advice about the unusual shaking of his fingers. Parkinson’s disease is caused by a loss of nerve cells in the brain called substantia nigra. Nerve cells produce a chemical called dopamine that coordinates movement.
This means the brain stops working at this part, and the movements become slow and abnormal. The cause of the loss of nerve cells is still unknown, but there is some effective research in the process.
The disease didn’t make things impossible for him, but he wanted to quit the show before he couldn’t act in the show anymore. It is a progressive disease, but it hasn’t broken his determination.
In November 1998, Fox announced he had been suffering from Parkinson’s for seven years, and he underwent brain surgery in March of that year to lessen the tremors caused by the illness.
