Michael J. Fox is remembering his mother, Phyllis Fox, two weeks after her death.
She died Sept. 24 at age 92.
The actor, 61, paid tribute to his late mother while attending the "Back to the Future Reunion Panel" at New York Comic-Con on Saturday, People reported.
Speaking to the audience, Michael recalled a story about how, in the 1980s, his mother was concerned about him being overworked filming "Family Ties" in the daytime and "Back to the Future" at night.
"I was 23 years old, and I called her, she was in Canada, and I said, 'They want me to do this Steven Spielberg movie, but I have to do it at night and I have to do "Family Ties" in the daytime.' And she said, 'You'll be too tired,'" Michael said.
"I live for this kind of tired. It'll be OK," he recalled telling his mother. "To this day — well, until two weeks ago — my mother thought it was a really bad idea for me to do 'Back to the Future.' She loved the movie, [but she was right], I got tired."
Michael's breakout role came in 1985 when he was cast as Marty McFly in Robert Zemeckis' original "Back to the Future," which was followed by sequels in 1989 and 1990. He went on to star in various films including "Casualties Of War," "The Frighteners" as well as sitcoms like ABC's "Spin City," according to NME.
In 1991, at age 29, Fox was diagnosed with Parkinson's but chose to reveal the news several years later. He retired from "Spin City" in January 2000, but in 2013 he returned to prime-time network TV as Mike Henry on NBC's "The Michael J. Fox Show," according to his official biography.
He went on to make several TV guest appearances, but later semi-retired from acting as his symptoms worsened.
In an interview with People in 2020, he admitted he was struggling with acting amid his Parkinson's battle.
"My short-term memory is shot," he said. "I always had a real proficiency for lines and memorization. And I had some extreme situations where the last couple of jobs I did were actually really word-heavy parts. I struggled during both of them."
Zoe Papadakis ✉
Zoe Papadakis is a Newsmax writer based in South Africa with two decades of experience specializing in media and entertainment. She has been in the news industry as a reporter, writer and editor for newspapers, magazine and websites.
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