Michael J. Fox Shares The Best Advice His Father Ever Gave Him

Michael J. Fox is a fighter. When the Back to the Future and Spin City actor was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease in 1991, he refused to let the condition cut his life or his career short. He kept acting, earned some Emmy Awards and Golden Globes statuettes, and most recently appeared on season 3 of Apple TV’s Shrinking with Harrison Ford.As the 65-year-old actor tells Esquire editor in chief Michael Sebastian in the latest episode of “What I’ve Learned,” his drive all stems from a quote his father told him when he left Canada to pursue acting in America: “Well, if you’re going to be a lumberjack, you might as well go to the goddamn forest.”Though Fox’s father, a former Canadian Armed Forces soldier, was likely talking about Hollywood, Fox says that he took his advice to mean that if you’re going to do anything in life—whether it be his acting, activism, or even his sheer optimism in the face of his disease—you better fully engage yourself in it.“My parents were born into the Depression... so they were risk adverse. Their whole life was just to have a nice life that didn’t leave anything exposed,” Fox continues. “And I wanted to do all this crazy stuff.” Namely, Teen Wolf, three Back to the Future films, playing on stage with Coldplay, poking fun at his condition on Curb Your Enthusiasm (“because it’s hilarious”), and never letting Parkinson’s slow you down.“I went through eight years of keeping it to myself and trying to forestall it with exercise and diet, learn a little bit from the doctors and experts, and then when I decided to share it it was like this great slap on the forehead,” Fox says about why he formed The Michael J. Fox Foundation. “I thought, There’s all these people that are experiencing this. Why aren’t we sharing our information about it?”Elsewhere in the episode, Fox shares what he’s learned from Rush Limbaugh accusing him of faking his diagnosis, meeting Barack Obama before he was president, and raising roughly $3 billion for Parkinson’s research. You can watch the episode above, watch it on YouTube here, or listen to it on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.“I don’t look at any time [in my life] and say, ‘Who was I then?’ or ‘Who will I be in a week?’ or “Who am I now?’ “ Fox says. “I just put my head down enough that I could still where I was going and just plough ahead. And I realize now that I’m in this great position where I can have an effect on people’s lives.”