Back to the Future star Michael J. Fox has officially announced his retirement from acting. Of course, the 59 year-old has only been semi-active for the last two decades having scaled back in workload as the symptoms of his Parkinson’s disease gradually worsened after he was originally diagnosed with the condition in 1991 when still in his 20s, but now, he’ll be refraining from getting in front of the camera altogether.
The diminutive star leaves behind a lasting legacy, though, and will always be remembered for playing Marty McFly in Robert Zemeckis’ Back to the Future trilogy, with the first installment in particular widely regarded as one of the greatest movies ever made. The series raked in over $970 million at the box office and turned the leading man into a global superstar, and it remains one of the most popular franchises in history that millions of fans rewatch every year.
Fox also won four Golden Globes from ten nominations, three of which came from his acclaimed turn in sitcom Spin City, while he scooped five Emmys from a total of seventeen nods, as well as winning two Screen Actors Guild Awards and a Grammy. Despite the debilitating nature of his Parkinson’s, Fox completed a five-episode stint on Designated Survivor in 2018 as well, appeared in two episodes of The Good Fight earlier this year and also popped up for a meta cameo as a teacher in Netflix’s time travel adventure See You Yesterday.
“There is a time for everything, and my time of putting in a twelve-hour workday, and memorizing seven pages of dialogue, is best behind me,” said Fox. “At least for now. I enter a second retirement. That could change, because everything changes. But if this is the end of my acting career, so be it.”
True to his humble reputation, the actor didn’t make a public statement about his retirement but announced it in his recently published second memoir, and while we won’t be seeing Michael J. Fox on the big or small screen any more in a fictional capacity, he has appeared in several documentaries over the last few years and may very well continue to do more of that sort of work.