Michael J. Fox turns 65! Go inside People's special edition dedicated to the...

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...trailblazing star (exclusive)

https://www.msn.com/en-us/tv/news/mi...8b98ec98&ei=15

Story by Rebecca Aizin

NEED TO KNOW

• PEOPLE's new special issue is celebrating the iconic Michael J. Fox as he turns 65 on Tuesday, June 9
• The issue looks back on Fox's career highlights including Family Ties, Back to the Future and his Emmy-winning role on Spin City
• It also delves into the impact Fox has made in research for a cure to Parkinson's disease, which he was diagnosed with at 29

Michael J. Fox has been a screen icon since starring as Marty McFly in the beloved Back to the Future trilogy over 40 years ago. Now, PEOPLE is celebrating the actor and activist as he turns 65.

A new special issue of PEOPLE, available for purchase now, delves into the defining moments of Fox's career, from his breakout roles to his decades-long journey with Parkinson's disease.

The actor got his start on Family Ties, an '80s sitcom about the Keaton family, whose matriarch and patriarch were once 1960s radicals now attempting to raise their Reagan-era children in suburbia. Fox starred as Alex, an ambitious young Republican, a role for which he won three Emmys after being nominated five times.

Amid his time on Family Ties, which aired its final episode in May 1989, Fox catapulted to A-list level fame with 1985's Back to the Future as Marty, an uncool teenager who makes an unprecedented visit to the past in a revamped car. The movie went on to spawn two sequels, and Fox cemented his status as a young actor to watch.

However, privately, Fox was struggling with the shocking early diagnosis of Parkinson's at age 29. Rather than keep his struggles private, Fox revealed his diagnosis in a 1998 PEOPLE cover story.

“It's not that I had a deep, dark secret,” Fox told PEOPLE at the time of his private struggle with the disease, the archived story of which is featured in PEOPLE's special issue. “It was just my thing to deal with. But this box I had put everything into kind of expanded to a point where it's difficult to lug around. What's inside the box isn't inhibiting me. It's the box itself. I think I can help people by talking. I want to help myself and my family.”

By the time he was diagnosed, Fox had already been married to his wife, Tracy Pollan, for three years after meeting on the set of Family Ties, and was already a dad to son Sam, born in 1989. The pair would go on to welcome twins, Schuyler and Aquinnah, in 1995, followed by daughter Esmé in 2001.

Following a highly successful run on Spin City, a sitcom about a deputy mayor that landed him an Emmy and three Golden Globes, Fox largely stepped away from acting to focus on his family and advocacy work.

That advocacy work has resulted in The Michael J. Fox Foundation, which has raised over $2.5 billion for for Parkinson's research. Still, the actor feels he has more left to do.

“Is that good?” Fox told PEOPLE in a 2025 interview celebrating the 25th anniversary of his nonprofit. “You don't know how much you need until you know how much it took. I'm so happy with what we've done. So happy to see advancement.”

He added in a 2026 interview with Time, “I know we've done a lot, but we haven't cured Parkinson's. I'm always pushing and never happy until we get this done.”

Take a look back at Fox's iconic career and legacy in PEOPLE's special issue, on newsstands now and available here.

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I didn't realize until now that Michael J. Fox and Julia Louis-Dreyfus are literally, the same age in real life, even though it's safe to presume that Julia's character on Family Ties, Susan White in the "Read It and Weep" episode is significantly older than Alex Keaton.