Why Michael J Fox Returned to Acting Five Years Into Retirement

For the third time, Fox has stepped back in front of the camera, this time in a part shaped by the disease he's lived with for over three decades. The comeback began with a single phone call to an old friend.

Michael J. Fox, who has lived with Parkinson's disease since his 1991 diagnosis, isn't letting the condition slow him down. The "Family Ties" alum recently wrapped a guest arc on the third season of "Shrinking," marking his third return to acting after twice announcing his retirement.

Fox wasn't actively hunting for a way back into television five years after stepping away from acting. Then he started watching "Shrinking," the Apple TV+ comedy co-created by Bill Lawrence, his former co-star from "Spin City."

On the show, Harrison Ford plays therapist Dr. Paul Rhoades, a character living with Parkinson's. After catching an episode, Fox picked up the phone and called Lawrence directly.

"I said, 'You did a show about Parkinson's, and you didn't call me?' And he said, 'Oh, you want to do it?' And I said, 'I'd love to do it,'" Fox, 64, told People in a new interview.

"So he said, 'Let me think about it, see what I can do.' So he went to work on it and came up with this concept, it's really good," Fox said. He stayed tight-lipped about the specifics of Lawrence's concept, though he confirmed his character also has Parkinson's.

For Fox, the experience offered something acting hadn't in years: freedom from constant self-monitoring. "It was the first time ever I get to show up on-set, and I didn't have to worry about am I too tired or coughing or anything," he said.

"I just do it. It was really good, because for the moments when I say, 'I'm not going to be able to do this,' then I say, 'Well, I'll just deal with how I can't do it in the scene.' And you get through it."

Working alongside Ford left an impression on the five-time Emmy winner, who described his co-star as "so real, so giving, so lovely."

The Canadian-born actor shot his three-episode arc earlier this year while finishing up "Future Boy," a memoir he co-wrote about juggling "Back to the Future" and his NBC sitcom "Family Ties" simultaneously in 1985.

His writing partner on that project, Nelle Fortenberry, revealed that Lawrence was also behind Fox's first return to acting after he left "Spin City" in 2000. "He quit Spin City, he was like, 'I'm done acting.' And Bill Lawrence was the first person who brought him back," she said.

"For Scrubs," Fox added, referencing his two-episode stint on the comedy's third season in 2004. He kept working on and off over the following sixteen years, popping up on series including "Boston Legal," "Rescue Me," and "The Good Wife."

By 2020, though, Fox was ready to step back. In his memoir "No Time Like the Future," he wrote that "work as an actor does not define" him, announcing his plan to leave on-screen work behind as his health struggles with Parkinson's intensified.

"The nascent diminishment in my ability to download words and repeat them verbatim is just the latest ripple in the pond," he wrote.

"There are reasons for my lapses in memorization — be they age, cognitive issues with the disease, distraction from the constant sensations of Parkinson's, or lack of sensation because of the spine — but I read it as a message, an indicator."

Outside of his occasional acting projects, the "Back to the Future" star has devoted much of his time to his namesake foundation, which has raised more than $3 billion for Parkinson's research since he launched it in 2000.