Christopher Lloyd just helped Michael J. Fox walk off a stage. It brought the crowd to tears.

Michael J. Fox has written a memoir before. Three, in fact. There was Lucky Man, then Always Looking Up and A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Future.

But don't be fooled by the predictably buoyant title of his 2020 book, No Time Like the Future. This one is different. Because according to Fox, this one is "cranky".

It comes on the back of an especially challenging period for Fox; one that left him questioning his bankable brand of optimism.

The Parkinson's disease he's lived with for 31 of his 61 years has made it challenging for him to walk unassisted, causes pain in his knees, jerks his limbs and means his famously fast brain to fire quite like it used to. 

"Absent a chemical intervention, Parkinson’s will render me frozen, immobile, stone-faced, and mute – entirely at the mercy of my environment," he wrote in the book. "For someone for whom motion equals emotion, vibrance and relevance, it’s a lesson in humility."

The degenerative disease, which affects nerves in the brain and for which there is no known cause or cure, has guided the award-winning actor to the end of his Hollywood career.

Watch: Michael J. Fox on his rock-bottom moment. Post continues below.

"In fairness to myself and to producers, directors, editors, and poor beleaguered script supervisors, not to mention actors who enjoy a little pace, I enter a second retirement. That could change, because everything changes. But if this is the end of my acting career, so be it."

This acceptance is what underpins his new style of optimism. Or as he described it to The New York Times, "informed hope".

Here is his winding path to reach it.

Fame, love and Parkinson's.

Michael J. Fox was 21 when he landed the role of Alex P. Keaton in the sitcom Family Ties. He'd only arrived in Los Angeles from Canada, where he was born and raised, a few years prior.

It was a star-making part, one that earned him three Emmys and Golden Globe and introduced him to the love of his life - his now-wife, Tracy Pollan, who played his girlfriend, Ellen, on the series. 

Tracy and Michael on the set of Family Ties. Image: Getty. But it's the 1985 instant-classic Back to the Future that takes top billing on Fox's resume. That's despite the nightmarish world premiere in London involving nerves, a full bladder and Princess Diana.

"She was sitting next to me, and the lights go down and I realise I am one fake yawn and arm-stretch away from being on a date with the Princess of Wales," he joked to Jimmy Fallon during a recent Late Show interview. 

"But then what happened was the movie started, and I had to go pee. So, for the rest of the movie, I am sitting there dying. I can't say anything to her, and I can't walk away because I can't turn my back on her. It was just agony. So what could have been the greatest night of my life was just a nightmare — a pee-floating nightmare."

Just years later, Fox started displaying the first symptoms of Parkinson's. He was diagnosed in 1991 at the age of 30. The news sent him into a self-destructive, alcohol-fuelled stupor.

He woke one morning on the couch, a bottle of spilled beer soaking into the carpet, his toddler son fussing around him. An exhausted, "overwhelmed" Pollan was on her way out the door for work, but in that moment contemplated leaving for good.

"She took in the scene and simply asked me, 'Is this what you want?'" Fox said. 

He never drank again.

The couple went on to have three more children - all girls. And Fox took home another Emmy and three more Golden Globes for the political sitcom Spin City. 

He enjoyed a 103-episode run, before leaving to focus on his Parkinson's research charity, The Michael J. Fox Foundation.

"I can't put a happy face on this."

Through it all Fox worked on achieving confidence and gratitude, on allowing the Parkinson's to take up space in his life while fiercely claiming what's left. Be it through his beloved golf, charity work or, a few years ago, a triumphant return returned to the screen with a recurring role on legal drama, The Good Wife.

But recently, his outlook has been informed by "a crucible".

The first, the 2018 discovery of a tumour on his spine that threatened to leave him paralysed.

Then four months into recovery from the surgery on his back, he slipped and fell in the kitchen of his New York apartment and shattered his arm. It was early in the morning. His wife was on holiday. 

There on the kitchen floor, waiting for an ambulance, he found the bottom of his well of optimism.

"I found myself sitting on that floor going, 'This is fucked-up. I can’t put a happy face on this.' And what did that mean that I couldn’t put a happy face on it? Does that mean it’s been bullshit all along, when I’ve tried to look at the positives?" he told Men's Health.

Reflecting on the support of his family, Fox said to PEOPLE: "Sometimes I'll stop and think, 'Am I selling short the experience my family is having?' But then I'll look back at it and say no - they're having fun. With Parkinson's, my kids just make that transition. My kids have learned empathy, resilience, and also sorting out what's important from what's not - things like vanity."

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His wife, Tracey Pollan said to AARP: "Sometimes the kids will need their dad's help and he'll say, 'I'm not feeling great right now'. But on the flip side, the first thing he does is go back to the kids when he's feeling good. It teaches them patience and empathy." 

His default is still gratitude. But now he creates more room for unflinching honesty, humility and, of course, humour about those moments that make him cranky.

"They're not big moments like, Why me?" he said. "It’s like, 'That sucks. That hurt.' Or like, I’m trying to push the right button on the phone, and I call Zimbabwe. Or I’m trying to [search] 'pet milk' and I get 'wet MILFs', so there’s porn coming out of my phone.

"But I just, um - it's what it is."

On quitting acting - "I can't do it."

In 2020, Fox said he had decided to part ways with acting.

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

"There are reasons for my lapses in memorisation - 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."

Fox said it was the issues associated with his memory and remembering lines that impacted his acting most. 

Speaking on Mike Birbiglia's Working It Out podcast, Fox spoke about how he's approached his professional acting work differently in recent years due to developments with his Parkinson's.

"When I did the spinoff from The Good Wife, I couldn't remember the lines. I just had this blank, I couldn't remember the lines. What was really refreshing was I didn't panic. I didn't freak out. I just went, 'Well, that's that. Moving on. A key element of this process is memorizing lines, and I can't do it'."

Michael J. Fox and co-star Christopher Lloyd reunite.

At New York's Comic Con event this week, Fox reunited on stage with Back To The Future co-star Christopher Lloyd. 

The pair hugging at Comic Con. Image: Getty.

The two were on stage and were reflecting on their 20-year friendship and work together.

"I didn't know Michael other than hearing about him. There was immediate chemistry, as they say," Lloyd said.

The conversation ended with the duo providing some life advice to the audience with both choosing film quotes. Fox quoted his favourite film, Dr. Stranglove while Lloyd went with a Back To The Future quote, saying: "It was said once in a movie - the future is what you make it."

When coming on and off the Comic Con stage, it was clear that Fox's Parkinson's disease had progressed, with the actor struggling with his mobilty. Those in the audience then began to applaud as Lloyd helped his former co-star by holding him up.

If you were a teenager in 1985, then Michael J. Fox was your guy. Marty McFly in Back to the Future is the coolest teenager in cinema history.
Watching him hug Christopher Lloyd like this is so beautiful. #BackToTheFuture #MichaelJFox pic.twitter.com/sniP95YE1J

— The Sting (@TSting18) October 9, 2022

For Fox, he continues to work hard on his Parkinson's research charity, The Michael J. Fox Foundation.

He doesn't know how many years he has left, nor when his disease will progress onto the final stage. But his hope is to keep optimisitic and bring awareness to Parkinson's in the hope that a cure can be found. 

"I've had Parkinson's for 100 years and I've made peace with it. We started a foundation literally from nothing. We're responsible for 17 active therapies that we now use, that were never thought of before - we funded a billion dollars in research," he said to Today.

"Optimism is a choice but in a way it isn't. I don't think there is another viable choice than to hope for the best and work towards it."

This article was originally published on November 21, 2020, and was updated on October 11, 2022.

Feature Image: Getty/Amblin Entertainment.