Michael J. Fox has no real plans to resume his career

The star says that his decision to retire in 2020 “wasn’t anything upsetting” for him. “It was pretty ok actually…”

Six years after leaving the profession, Michael J. Fox is back. But it will be brief!

As he appears on screen for season 3 of Shrinking, he insists: this is not an official return to the Hollywood industry.

In an interview with the Los Angeles Times, the immortal Marty from Back to the Future says that his decision to step down in 2020, after a guest role in The Good Fight, “wasn’t really earth-shattering as far as I’m concerned. It was pretty OK actually…”

At the time, he even confused the scripts with those of another drama, Designated Survivor. After trying to rehearse his lines, he reportedly found himself in front of a mirror, frustrated, saying to himself: “Ah damn! I can’t do it anymore. Too bad. We do the best we can and move on. That’s what I did.”

Diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in 1991 and having announced it publicly in 1998, Michael J. Fox had already left Spin City in 2000, when his symptoms made filming too difficult. But he had been called back by co-creator Bill Lawrence for a guest role on Scrubs.

“I didn’t want to do anything after Spin City…then I discovered a new niche: playing characters with a flaw, transposing my Parkinson’s issues into roles on Boston Legal or The Good Wife.”

Today, it was Lawrence again who convinced him for Shrinking. The show addresses Parkinson’s disease through the character of Harrison Ford, and Michael J. Fox was seduced by the accuracy of this representation: “The depth of the characters, the quality of the relationships, the language… it’s just a beautiful series. I did it for fun, not to relaunch my career. And then there’s Harrison Ford, it’s crazy.”

In conclusion, he wishes to clarify, above all, that this remarkable return “is not the start of a campaign to re-establish my career”.

In 2020, he announced his retirement from acting in his book No Time Like the Future, explaining that Parkinson’s made memorizing texts and filming days difficult. On the set of Shrinking, these constraints were not a problem: playing for pleasure, and telling stories that matter, is enough.