Michael J Fox has compared his Parkinson’s condition to a “bully” while lamenting the “bully culture” he believes we live in today.
The Back to the Future star, who is celebrating 40 years since the release of the classic sci-fi film, believes the movie still resonates with audiences thanks to the themes it touches on.
“We live in a bully culture right now,” the 64-year-old told Empire in a new interview.
Elaborating more on his Parkinson’s disease, an illness he has lived with since 1991, Fox said: “For me personally, Parkinson’s is a bully.”
He said that much about dealing with a bully is “how you stand up to them and the resolve that you take into the fight with them”.
“It’s about your resilience and your courage,” he added.
“We have bullies everywhere – you don’t need me to point the finger at who, but there are all these bullies,” Fox told Empire. “In this movie, Biff is a bully. Time is a bully.”
Moving his thoughts back to the film’s themes, Fox said: “I think there’s a lot to that right now. I think a lot of people are responding to the movie because it strikes chords they wouldn’t otherwise recognise.”
Biff is the main antagonist in the Back to the Future franchise. The character, portrayed by Thomas F Wilson, is a high school bully who torments Fox’s character, Marty McFly, in all three instalments of the trilogy.
Fox famously compared US President Donald Trump to Biff in 2020, during the controversial Republican’s first term in office.
“Every worst instinct in mankind has been played on [by Trump], and for me that’s just anathema,” Fox told The Guardian. “Biff is president!”
Back to the Future creator Bob Gale has previously said that Biff was partly inspired by the real-life Trump. In 1985, when the first Back to the Future film came out, Trump was a well-known real estate developer and tabloid celebrity.
Fox was diagnosed with Parkinson’s at the age of 29. He later launched the Michael J Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research nine years later. Since then, the organisation has raised over $2.5bn for Parkinson’s research.
Raising awareness of the disease on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert on Tuesday (21 October), the actor said: "People that had Parkinson’s were stigmatised, so to represent them, I’m so humbled by it. But it’s not about me"
