Lucky Man

by Michael J. Fox

  The expression that comes to mind is “as if,” as in “act as if this were all normal.” But, of course, it wasn't. At least not for me. I couldn't help feeling there was something inauthentic about the whole thing—if not the situation itself, then at least my position in it. Perhaps there was something you could do to be worthy of all of this—the money, the attention, the indulgence—but had I met the criteria? And so in time I began to feel like an imposter. It's almost as if I expected someone, at any moment, to kick in my door and tell me the charade had gone as far as it was going to go. The jig was up; it was time to go back to Canada, and don't even think about bringing any of this stuff with you. I don't know who, exactly, I thought was going to come storming in with this ultimatum, but I figured I might as well be drunk when they got here.

  I can remember visiting that newsstand on Van Nuys Boulevard one day, and there among all the teen magazines, gossip tabloids, and other periodicals splashing my face on their covers, was one in particular that paralyzed me with fear. I was convinced the dreaded moment had arrived—that this was it, that they'd finally nailed me. For what other reason would I be on the cover of Psychology Today? I grabbed the magazine and frantically flipped through its pages until I found the cover story.

  Turned out it had nothing to do with me specifically—it was just a general essay on the pervasiveness of celebrity in American culture. I don't even think my name was mentioned once. They were just using my face to sell a few copies (if you can't beat 'em, exploit 'em). For a second there, though, I had no doubt that I'd been totally and righteously busted.

  I'M FAMOUS, YOU'RE FAMOUS

  My wife Tracy, a lifelong New Yorker, cracks me up with her pithy observations about L.A.—especially regarding the lengths to which that city will go in catering to its more celebrated citizenry. “I'm surprised they don't have celebrity parking,” she once mused. “You know, like handicapped parking, only more convenient.” She went on to say that these choice spots could be marked with signage bearing not the customary star, but an even more appropriate image: a silhouette of a baseball cap floating over a pair of sunglasses.

  What intrigued me, as I increasingly found myself in settings rife with famous people, was how many of them seemed to be friends with one another. I was struck, too (and, okay, flattered), by how many of them knew who I was. Some movie star, whose work I'd been watching for years, would just sidle up to me and start chatting as if we'd been in Little League together. It gradually dawned on me that while a certain percentage of these relationships were genuine, a lot of what I perceived as friendship among the famous was, like so much else in this industry, an illusion. By this, I'm not implying a society of duplicitous backstabbers; only that, in many cases, these people “knew” each other in the same way that you might know any one of them—for the simple reason that they are well-known. The twist is, they each know that they themselves are well-known, so in that way, two celebrities not only know each other, but have something in common: they know that the other knows what it is like to be known by everyone else. This results in a certain bond, and a strangely easy sort of camaraderie. This is the phenomenon that Tracy (who else?) refers to as the “I'm famous, you're famous” club.

  While I've never been particularly star-struck, there were times when I couldn't help but be impressed by the company I was keeping. In March of 1986, I traveled to Las Vegas with Sugar Ray Leonard. Though we'd never met before, we were co-investors on a real estate deal along with a rich entrepreneur, on whose private jet we were traveling to see that weekend's Marvin Hagler/John Mugabi fight. Thrilled to have a ringside seat, I was even more thrilled to be in the company of one of my favorite boxers.

  Following the fight, we were escorted into the casino. In an area sectioned off by velvet ropes, crowded around the high-roller tables, was a particularly glittering crowd—the “I'm famous, you're famous” club on a weekend road trip. Here were old friends, many meeting for the first time, and I was amazed at how easily I could slide into their ranks; how matter-of-factly they accepted me, a newcomer. The party continued until 5:00 or 6:00 in the morning, and as it broke up, earnest promises were made to “get together” and “do lunch” back in L.A.

  Of course, not everyone in this elite club is eager to see the membership rolls expanded—believing there should definitely be velvet ropes inside the velvet ropes—and these people are quick to send that signal. At that year's Oscars, I presented an award and backstage afterwards I passed Cher, in full diva regalia, waiting by an elevator. “Hi,” I said, extending my hand. “I'm Mike Fox.”

  Maybe it had something to do with my being roughly the same height as Sonny, or the fact that she had starred in Mask with Eric Stoltz, the actor whom I'd replaced in Back to the Future, but Cher seemed less than thrilled to meet me.

  “I know who you are,” she said flatly across an imaginary velvet rope, and without stopping to shake my hand, turned and stepped into the elevator. I'm famous, you . . . not so much.

  The reason Tracy's appellation for this separate and insular fraternity is so canny is that like “I'm okay, you're okay,” “I'm famous, you're famous” suggests a kind of support group. Interacting with others who, in many cases, do the same thing for a living, and for whatever reason have been afforded the same privileges, reinforces the idea that this ethereal existence is a normal state of being.

  Maybe I just wasn't that good at it—at lowering my voice so that others would have to strain to hear my pearls of wisdom. Because as time went on, I found I wasn't getting any more comfortable in the role of “star,” and I knew I was approaching a moment when I would have to make a choice: to stay in the real world, or set up permanent housekeeping here on the other side of the looking glass.

  Not that life on the other side didn't have its temptations. Magical thinking is infectious, and there were many moments I succumbed, though one in particular stands out. Growing up in Canada during the sixties and seventies, I idolized Bobby Orr, the legendary Boston Bruins’ defenseman. As any Boston hockey fan could tell you, the day he was traded to the Chicago Blackhawks set off a long period of civic mourning. So when, in the mid-eighties, years after Orr had retired because of bad knees, it was announced that he would be leading a team of Bruin old-timers against a team of celebrities in a charity hockey game at the Boston Garden, the event sold out immediately. I was ecstatic at being asked to play, and literally dumbstruck when, minutes before the game, Bobby Orr came over to speak to me.

  George Wendt of Cheers, our team's honorary coach and a fellow Orr worshipper, was the one who tapped me as I was lacing up my skates, excitedly indicating the approach of the hockey god himself. Orr was genial and down-to-earth. But as he started talking to me, I realized I was too excited to comprehend what the hell he was saying. I just nodded my head.

  After he left, George sat down beside me again. “What were you guys talking about?” he asked.

  “I have no idea,” I admitted. “But that was so cool.”

  Toward the end of the first period of play, the Bruin old-timers were forcing the play in my team's end when I stole the puck, and, skating toward Orr, who was guarding the blue line, executed a quick fake, tucked the puck between his feet, glided around him and picked it up on the other side, breaking away toward the opposing goal. My blade caught an edge and I fell briefly, but recovered before anyone caught me and sailed a wrist shot past their net minder.

  This was easily one of the most thrilling moments of my life. I was almost hyperventilating when I returned to the bench. As I took a big gulp of water, I was thinking, Holy shit, I just faked out Bobby Orr and scored on a breakaway! Then it hit me—what Bobby Orr had said to me before the game:

  “Near the end of the first period,” he'd said, “I'm gonna let you put the puck between my legs, break away, and score.”

  I know, it was only a charity hockey game, and gimme goals are a staple of those kind of events. But the fact that I was able to fool myself about what had just happened,
however briefly, stands as an emblem for me of the seductiveness of magical thinking, and just how easy, and perilous, it is to accept the fantasy of this life as reality.

  “FOUR FEET TALL”

  Steve and I managed to arrive safely in Vancouver that Saturday in August of 1986—this despite my penchant for driving too fast. As it turned out, my unquenchable need for speed allowed us to shatter our twenty-four-hour drive time estimate: we crossed the border in just under eighteen hours.

  I not only loved these trips home to Canada, I had come to depend on them. Ironically, the sheer ordinariness of life in British Columbia, the same normalcy that I had found so restricting as a kid, was something I now craved, at least in small doses. My time away, and the extreme nature of my experience, had given me a fresh perspective. Happy for, if surprised by, my success, my family never tried to co-opt it, take advantage of it, or pass it off as their own.

  My parents did allow me to do some things for them: help them pay off the mortgage on their old home and move into a new one, fix Dad up with a fancier car and talk him into an early retirement—in effect providing that pension he'd kidded about before the 1979 trip to Los Angeles. I was insistent; they'd worked so hard their whole lives. While these gestures were accepted, my parents made it clear they were never expected. In fact, my earlier attempts at largesse were politely, but firmly, discouraged. In the heady first years of Family Ties, for example, I'd come home at Christmas and shower the whole family with inappropriately lavish gifts—household appliances like big-screen TVs and side-by-side washer/dryer units. We'd all sit around the tree after Christmas dinner, awkwardly avoiding the subject of my unseemly swag crowding out all the other gifts, and drink B-52 shooters chased with beers—a kind of bizarro reenactment of my father's ancient Christmas Eve tree vigil, though now with me as the prime-time paterfamilias. Eventually I'd pass out—or, worse, puke on the rug—and they'd put me to bed. My family always made me feel that home was a place where it was still safe to be myself.

  But by the time Steve and I rolled into town, at the tail end of our sprint up the West Coast, the whole fame thing had gotten too big to leave at the border; there was no refuge from the ubiquitous reminders of my celebrity. In retrospect, I obviously had some ambivalence about leaving it behind—why else would I have gone to the trouble of driving my flashy sports car all the way up here?

  Vancouver was the home of the World's Fair that year, Expo 1986, and an attempt to walk the grounds with my family proved impossible. I was attracting so much attention that security eventually had to intervene and quickly arrange a private tour for us, using back doors and other behind-the-scenes approaches to bypass public entrances to the exhibits.

  Just before things started to get out of hand, however, I noticed a souvenir photo booth—one of those setups where folks can stand next to a cardboard cutout of a celebrity or famous politician and have their picture taken. There, between Rambo and Reagan, was a likeness of me—actually, Marty McFly in the looking-at-his-watch pose from the movie poster. My family thought this was hilarious, and goaded me into posing with myself. Keeping my head down so that the photographer wouldn't get what was happening until the last second, if at all, I gave him the five bucks and stepped in front of the camera. I remember a burst of laughter from my dad, who had been the first to notice: the cardboard me was a good six inches taller than I was. Maybe so, I thought to myself, looking over the one-sided cutout, but at least I have an ass.

  A few weeks later, I was back in Los Angeles—Pasadena actually—at the Civic Auditorium. I was up for the Lead Actor in a Comedy Emmy. I'd had a shot at an award the previous year, in the Supporting Actor category. I hadn't expected to win, and didn't. This year, in a more competitive category, I was even less confident, but I had been on such a freakish lucky streak that anything seemed possible. I had no speech prepared—an obvious jinx—but there was a line, a short joke, I'd been kicking around in my head since the day the nominations came down. At first it seemed like a simple bit of self-deprecating humor, a play on the fact that so much attention seemed focused on my height, or lack thereof. Jokes like the one I was considering have two purposes: they show that you're willing to laugh at yourself, and they make a preemptive strike—say it about yourself before somebody else gets a chance to.

  And so, when fellow Canadian Howie Mandel opened the envelope and announced, “The Emmy for lead actor in a comedy series goes to . . . Michael J. Fox,” I bounded to the stage, accepted the statuette, ran my fingers through my hair, made some brief, inarticulate crowing noises, and sputtered “I don't believe this.” Then, steadying myself, my gaze panned the expanse of the auditorium, and I said it: “. . . I feel four feet tall.”

  In the years since, it's become clearer, to me at least, that the joke was about much more than my height. I was expressing just how overwhelmed by my success I was feeling, tacitly acknowledging that I didn't feel worthy of everything that was happening to me. I didn't measure up.

  During my next hiatus, I brought the trophy back to Vancouver—in part, to share the honor with my parents, but also, frankly, to show it off. Mom gave Emmy a place of honor on a table in the entry hall to their home, directly across from the front door. That night, my brother and sisters gathered at Mom and Dad's. There was lots of laughing and celebrating. Experience had taught me, though, that somewhere in all this backslapping, Steve, or somebody, would come up with a way to tweak me—bring my balloon back down to earth. When the shot hadn't come by the time my beer intake went critical, I made my way downstairs to the guest bedroom in the basement and fell asleep.

  The following morning when I stepped into the entry hall where the Emmy had spent the night, I burst out laughing. Surrounding the gold-plated statuette, as if to subdue its gaudiness by the force of sheer numbers, were my brother's fifteen-year-old boxing trophy, Mom's bridge trophy, Dad's curling trophy, my sisters’ bowling and swimming trophies, plus a few other tokens of their individual triumphs. Perfect.

  It was this sort of simple but pointed comic gesture that provided me with reassurance. If the entire dizzying ride came to an abrupt end, if the other shoe dropped and I was exposed as an imposter, I still had a place to go back to. I still had a home in the real world.

  Although just a couple of weeks later, I wouldn't be so sure. My folks came down to visit me in L.A., and they brought the Emmy with them. As soon as my parents arrived at my door, I could see that my father was distraught. Something terrible had happened. We hugged in the driveway, and Dad excused himself, carrying his luggage, as well as a carry-on bag, into the house ahead of us. Mom touched my arm, wordlessly requesting that I stay back with her a moment; that there was something she needed to tell me.

  “There was an accident on the trip down here,” she told me. “It's your Emmy. It's pretty badly broken. I don't think it can be fixed.” The overnight bag with the statue in it had been tucked into the overhead compartment, she explained, and another passenger's luggage shifted during the flight, crushing it.

  “Is that what Dad's so upset about? That's crazy!”

  When I got into the house my dad was sitting at the dining room table. I hadn't often seen him quite this shaken. The whole scene had a strange sort of upside-down feeling to it. I looked at him and thought of myself as a kid, all the times I had bashed in the fender, bumper, or door panel of his car and waited, miserably, for him to come into the room and confront me. It rattled me to see him so near tears.

  “Dad.” I smiled, reaching down to him for a hug. “Forget about it. It's a trophy. It's just a piece of metal. And, besides, I've heard of this happening before—they just give you another one. Don't worry about it, okay?” His relief was instantaneous and palpable.

  The incident stayed with me because it drove home how the fantasy of celebrity could hold even the most levelheaded in its grip. Here was my dad, erstwhile ambassador for the reality principle, treating this hunk of laminated tin as if it were a sacred relic. As if it somehow embodied succes
s, or power, or me. If he, of all people, had bought into this sort of magical thinking, then everybody in my world had succumbed. Who would have thought that in my entire family, I would be the sole surviving skeptic?

  But this time I had found another ally, blessed with a healthy dose of skepticism and a clear understanding of the unique pressures I was facing. This lifeline to the real world had been in place for a year already at the moment my parents and I huddled around the mortally wounded Emmy—I just didn't know it yet.

  TRACY

  At the end of the summer of 1985, as the 1985–1986 Family Ties season was getting under way, something big happened: Alex Keaton got a girlfriend. A budding romance with Ellen, an art student he'd met at college, immediately captured the imagination of the show's audience—the ratings picked up where they'd left off at the end of the previous season, and climbed even higher.

  For me, the effects would be more far-reaching. I suddenly had a partner. As an actress, the young woman cast in the role had an earthiness, integrity, and talent that demanded I push my own work to a higher level simply to hold my place onstage with her. She, as much as anyone, would be responsible for my bounding up those stairs in Pasadena a year later to accept an Emmy. Later, as a friend, she'd help me to ask and answer many of the questions I was now grappling with. There was no way to foresee it then, but in a couple of years I'd have a question for her, she'd say “yes,” and, as my wife, she'd love and stay with me through challenges that neither of us had easy answers for. Tracy Pollan had come into my world.