Michael J. Fox stood before the Television Academy on Monday night and told a story he kept to himself for years: that after his Parkinson’s diagnosis, he feared audiences would stop believing in him if they knew he was sick. At the 78th Emmy Awards, he accepted the Bob Hope Humanitarian Award and turned that fear into one of the evening’s most striking moments.
Fox told the crowd he initially kept his Parkinson’s diagnosis secret, worried it would damage his career and his bond with audiences. He wondered aloud whether people would have laughed at him had they known he was sick. The reaction, once he went public, surprised him. He said the support he received afterward convinced him he hadn’t lost what made him who he was.
Fox, 65, took the stage in a wheelchair, wearing a black suit, and was introduced by his former “The Good Wife” co-star Julianna Margulies. He attended with his wife, Tracy Pollan, marking their first Emmys appearance together in over a decade. Before turning to his own story, Fox paid tribute to the award’s namesake. He recalled that his parents, who came of age during the Great Depression and World War II, viewed Bob Hope less as an entertainer than as a tireless supporter of American troops abroad.
The honor recognized more than sentiment. Fox founded the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research in 2000, and it has since grown into the largest nonprofit funder of Parkinson’s research in the world, directing roughly three billion dollars toward the search for treatments and a cure. That funding has helped drive real momentum in the field even as the disease’s toll keeps growing — its annual economic impact in the United States topped eighty-two billion dollars in 2024, arriving faster than researchers had projected.
Fox is a five-time Emmy winner, first honored in 1986 for playing Alex P. Keaton on Family Ties, and this year picked up his nineteenth nomination for a guest role on Apple TV’s Shrinking, where he plays a Parkinson’s patient opposite Harrison Ford. The Bob Hope Humanitarian Award itself is rare — Monday’s ceremony marked only the eighth time it has been given out in Emmys history. As Fox left the stage, the audience rose again, closing out a night built around one actor’s refusal to let illness define the limits of his work.
