Beloved ’80s icon Michael J. Fox said famous people “were” different back when he shot to stardom.
“There’s an expression I referred to when they gave me an honorary Academy Award — somebody said to me the day before, they were talking about getting this award and being famous and they said ‘You’re ‘80s famous,’” Fox, 62, told People in an exclusive interview. “I thought, wow, that’s cool. ‘80s famous. Right, we were different.”
A teen heartthrob when he starred from 1982 to 1989 as the uber-Conservative yuppy, Alex P. Keaton, on “Family Ties,” Fox easily transitioned to the big screen as Marty McFly in the 1985 blockbuster “Back to the Future.”
“We were tougher,” Fox said of his fellow ’80s stars. “We didn’t have social media, we didn’t have any of that crap. We were just famous. Left to our own resources. And it was an amazing time.”
(Video: YouTube)
Asked if it was “harder” to be a GenX celebrity, Fox suggested that many of today’s stars lack a critical skill.
“Well, you had to be talented,” he replied. “That helped.”
“We used to bust our ass, our acting muscles, and watch other actors and sit around with other actors and talk about acting and talk about it,” he recalled. “And now you’ve got people who just go like, ‘Who’s your sweater? What’s the sweater you’re wearing? And what’s that dance step?’ and you’re the most famous person in the world.”
In 2022, Fox was presented with an honorary Oscar by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Board of Governors, the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award, “for his tireless advocacy and boundless optimism to change the future for millions of people and families in the Parkinson’s community.”
Actor, friend, and fellow alum of a hit ’80s t.v. show, Woody Harrelson introduced Fox.
“Michael J. Fox never asked for the role of Parkinson’s patient, disease advocate,” Harrelson said. “But make no mistake, it is his greatest performance.”
(Video: YouTube)
Sitting with People, Fox went back in time with his many appearances on the magazine’s coveted covers.
“It’s been this weird chronicle of my life, in a sense,” he said of his relationship with People. “Not everybody has that library of their life at their disposal.”
Fame, he said, is “a funny deal.”
“It’s a funny deal when you’re that famous,” he said. “And it’s beyond just being on the cover of magazines.”
“It’s like, you go to a restaurant and they pull the best table out of their butts, you know?” he explained. “You don’t know where they got it from, but they always seem to have your table for you, wherever you want it. It’s really insane.”
When he first announced his diagnosis of Parkinson’s on the cover of People in 1998, Fox said, “The response was great.”
“The response was loving and supportive and … it was a payoff for all of the stuff I had done through the years,” he said.
The actor gave People an update on his life in 2022.
“People say, ‘You do too much press,’” he said. “I said, ‘People want to know what I’m doing.’ So, it was always really basic to me. It was always people — with a small ‘p.’”
“It was humans that I did this stuff for,” Fox said. “I didn’t do it for me. … I tried to always keep on a level of just talking to people that I knew were friends of mine, supporting me, and watching the films that I made. And so, when tough times came, they were there for me.”
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Author: Melissa Fine
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