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It did not.
By 2004, he began accepting supporting roles again.
There was an important difference this time.
Rather than attempting to conceal Parkinson’s symptoms, Fox was willing to incorporate them into characters when appropriate.
He appeared on Scrubs.
He appeared on Boston Legal.
Then came Rescue Me.
His performance as Dwight earned him his fifth Primetime Emmy Award.
More roles followed.
Louis Canning and a Different Kind of Performance
Fox later appeared as attorney Louis Canning on The Good Wife.
The character had a neurological condition, allowing Fox to incorporate aspects of his own physical experience into the performance.
The role earned him multiple Emmy nominations.
He also appeared as a version of himself on Curb Your Enthusiasm.
The appearances demonstrated something important about his relationship with acting.
Parkinson’s had changed the conditions under which he performed.
It had not eliminated his ability to create memorable characters.
In 2013, he returned as the star of his own television comedy.
It was called The Michael J. Fox Show.
The premise drew partly from his real life.
Fox played a television news anchor who had Parkinson’s disease and returned to work.
Reality and fiction were now intersecting in ways that would have seemed impossible when he first concealed his diagnosis.
And eventually, his real story became the subject of a film of its own.
“Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie”
In 2023, Apple TV released Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie.
Directed by Davis Guggenheim, the documentary combined interviews, archival material and scripted elements.
The film explored Fox’s rapid rise to fame.
It revisited the years surrounding his Parkinson’s diagnosis.
It examined his family life.