What it's really like being Michael J Fox

For the children of the 1980s, Michael J Fox was the most ubiquitous superstar. The pint-sized Canadian comedian, who made his name on the sitcom Family Ties before leaping to big-screen, global recognition in films such as Back to the Future and Teen Wolf, was on the cover of every magazine, the applauded guest on every US TV talk show and the impishly smiling face on every blockbuster movie poster.

Though his 1990s film career took a dive at the box office and saw a decrease in his profile, Fox managed to claw his way back to widespread family-friendly popular appeal with his starring role in the sitcom Spin City before, in 1998, shocking the world with the revelation that he had been suffering for years from Parkinson’s disease, an incurable degenerative condition that he’d kept hidden from everyone except his family for almost a decade.

Fans weren't just shocked that this popular and beloved celebrity was suffering from a disease viewed by many as a death sentence; it was also that he was only in his 30s and afflicted by a condition that most associated with old age.

In the past 25 years he's made the occasional cameo on shows such as Curb Your Enthusiasm and appeared a number of times before the US Congress to plead for greater government spending on Parkinson’s research, but for the most part Fox has retreated from public life and, while we know that he’s still alive and out there, we mostly associate him with that period in the 1980s when he was the boyish comic king of Hollywood.

Now, with the innovative and empathetic help of Oscar-winning documentarian Davis Guggenheim, Fox puts himself, shakily and vulnerably but still with sharp humour, in the spotlight for the Apple TV+ documentary Still: A Michael J Fox Movie.

Cleverly editing clips from Fox’s screen career and a difficult to deliver but wryly funny voice-over from Fox, Guggenheim takes us through a sharply selected highlights package of his subject’s many inspiring highs and depressing lows.

Fox offers his own hindsight-tinged assessment of his life behind the scenes that, though not always easy to talk about, shows a dedicated willingness to be honest with himself and us about what’s it really been like to be Michael J Fox for the past 60 years.

His determination to continue living and laughing with his family, while using his resources to help other sufferers, is inspiring and touching, and the twinkle behind his ageing eyes reminds us of why he was and always will be a man who’s just too darn sweet and funny not to like.