CELEBRITY INTERVIEW: MICHAEL J. FOXX

CHECK OUT THIS THROWBACK INTERVIEW MY GOOD AMIGOS AT ESQUIRE MAGAZINE CONDUCTED WITH THE EVER INTERESTING WARRIOR, MICHAEL J FOXX AS PART OF THEIR ‘WHAT I’VE LEARNED SERIES’. GOOD STUFF. CHEERS, & ENJOY

What I've Learned: Michael J. Fox

Actor, 46, New York

By: Scott Raab

Right now, I’m feeling pretty good. It’s just one little thing in my brain.

If I let it affect everything, it’s gonna own everything. I don’t deny it or pretend it’s not there, but if I don’t allow it to be bigger than it is, then I can do everything else.

My body is an isometric exercise, because I’m always putting pressure against things. Whatever I’m doing at any given time, I’m also doing something else -- I’ve always got this thing going on.

The thing I miss most is spontaneity -- just kind of saying, Fuck it, let’s go to Vegas. I can’t really do that.

I got a ‘67 Mustang, but I’m not driving it much. My wife gave it to me for my thirty-fifth birthday, so I’ve had it for eleven years, but even when she gave it to me, it came with vintage plates, which was kinda distressing -- a car that’s six years younger than me is a registered antique.

There was this image of me as this kind of cute ‘n’ cuddly guy, which in as far as it got me laid, I didn’t mind it too much. It made me party harder.

People said, “Does it bother you that girls want to sleep with you because you’re famous?” “That’s a tough one. Lemme think about that. No.“

I knew I had something more going on than just being cute. What was tough about that for me was growing up playing hockey, coming from Canada, leaving at eighteen, all that stuff. I was a beer drinker and a chain-smoker, and I’d been in my share of scraps when I was a kid. So I kinda saw myself as a little bit of a hard guy, you know?

I can’t always control my body the way I want to, and I can’t control when I feel good or when I don’t. I can control how clear my mind is. And I can control how willing I am to step up if somebody needs me.

That’s one of the things the illness has given me: It’s a degree of death. There’s a certain amount of loss, and whenever you have a loss, it’s a step toward death. So if you can accept loss, you can accept the fact that there’s gonna be the big loss. Once you can accept that, you can accept anything. So then I think, Well, given that that’s the case, let’s tip myself a break. Let’s tip everybody a break.

My happiness grows in direct proportion to my acceptance, and in inverse proportion to my expectations.

Acceptance is the key to everything.

Which isn’t to say that I’m resigned to it, or that I’ve given up on it, or that I don’t think I have any effect on the outcome of it. It’s just that, as a reality, I get it.

Who gives a shit how it looks? It doesn’t matter. I look like what I look like.

If you don’t have someone calling you on your shit, you’re lost.

I can’t be smug, because I know that you can lose anything at any point. And I can’t be angry, because I haven’t lost it.

I started golf in my forties, which is the ultimate optimism.

My whole life, meeting people is like a blind date, because I feel like they’ve already seen the video on me.

I say to my son, “My tattoo is that I don’t have a tattoo.” I just about got a tattoo when my dad passed away, because he had one, a horse’s head surrounded by a horseshoe with roses -- he was a jockey before he went into the military. So when he passed away, I just about went downtown and got a tattoo of a horse with roses. I’m glad I didn’t -- because I was drunk outta my ass.

Discipline is just doing the same thing the right way whether anyone’s watching or not.

I was never big on lunch boxes and all that stuff, and I look at it now and think, God, how much money I turned down. Oh, fuck, I’d do it in a heartbeat now.

I realized very quickly that I had no idea what the hell was good for me to do. You have no idea. The things you do -- you do some things for money, you do some things for free. It’s a very difficult place to be. But on the other hand, it’s so much fun. You realize, There’s no way I should be allowed to do it, and I’m gonna watch everybody let me do it -- and I can get a giggle out of how it’s killing them.

I make no bones about the fact that I stopped drinking. That was the key to everything. Until I did that, I just couldn’t have the clarity.

I had to choose not to party anymore. I could’ve chosen to continue doing that, but that would’ve been destructive. Who wants to be a cliché?

I’m driving the Ferrari down Ventura Boulevard ninety miles an hour and the cop goes, “Mike! C’mon, take it easy, you’re gonna hurt somebody.” I remember sitting there after the cop walked away, going, “This is just seriously fucked up. This is really crazy.” It’s one of those moments when you realize that the only thing that’s ever going to stop me from doing whatever I want to do is me -- and I don’t want the job.

No matter how much money you have, you can lose it.

No matter how much fame you have, it’s not something that belongs to you. If I’m famous, that doesn’t belong to me -- that belongs to you. If you can’t remember who I am, I’m no longer famous.

I see Us magazine and People magazine and all these tabloids -- they have the same story over and over again. It’s the same every week, and I get all kind of smug about it, and I think, Come on, really? You care about this shit? But then cut to me going, “Get outta the corner! Get the fuckin’ puck up! What the fuck are ya doing?” It’s tough to stay off the subject of the fact that we’re all gonna die. We all need our subject changers. That’s what it all comes down to.

The thing with Limbaugh was so interesting. I didn’t even have to say anything. People said to me, “Don’t ya hate the guy?” I was like, “I can’t get it up to hate the guy.” I know it’s a racket, I know it’s a job -- it’s show business, and that’s fine. Let’s take it as show business.

People wanted me to rip him apart. The truth is, Limbaugh is ripping himself apart well enough for all of us.

Six months in the jungle with Sean Penn is tricky, but he’s a real talented guy. I sent him a note at the end of it saying, “I can’t say that it was a pleasure, but it was a privilege.”

I have this Bose Sirius radio, and I put it on Classic Vinyl and get my guitar and just play along with it -- it’s all twelve-bar blues -- and for hours I just do that.

I’m not in the widget business anymore. I have no widgets to sell.

I had lunch with Sean when I was trying to decide whether to go back and do Spin City. I said, “I just want to pick your brain.” He’s a brilliant guy and a great artist and an honest fella in a great way. I said, “I’m trying to figure out whether to go back and do this TV show,” and he gets this smile on his face and he goes, “Well, it is the most successful part of your gift.” Brilliant. What I love is that I could hear that and laugh my ass off and say, “Fuck you” -- but I so appreciate people that think on that level.

I always wanted to do a short film about Petomane, the flatulist. Petomane was the guy who could do the “1812 Overture” out of his ass.

When I see pictures of Lindsay Lohan in the car or Paris Hilton -- the level of glee and the level of viciousness -- wow. We’ve got a war goin’ on. We’ve got people dying. And we’re all up in arms about this girl.

I have such empathy for all these young women. I was there, and I did all that crap. We’d rip it up, y’know? And we never got busted on any of that stuff.

“She deserves it” and “Who does she think she is?” Who does she think she is? She doesn’t think -- she doesn’t know what she had for breakfast this morning. Who gives a shit? Relax, everybody. Calm down.

Whatever terrible thing is going on, it’s going on until you find out that it’s not. So get to that part as quickly as possible.

I don’t know of anyone that’s had a perfect run.

I’m an American citizen since ‘99. I’m happy because I get to vote. There’s a lot of years that I paid for a lot of stuff that I didn’t like; I like having a say in it.

It started the summer before last summer, when the president vetoed the first Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act. He had these families around him, these “snowflake babies,” which presented it like it was an either/or situation and the two were mutually exclusive. It was just such manipulation, and it just pissed me off so much.

I’m not looking at polling, I don’t have to play any of these games, I don’t have to worry about whether I’m on message or off message. I’m just saying, Hey, can we look at this for a second?

I don’t really consider myself a political animal. I try not to be grandiose about that. It’s like the barn is burning down and you’ve got the bucket of water. I don’t know how I got this bucket of water, I don’t remember going to get it, but it’s in my hand, so I guess I’ve gotta throw it.

I have to think of myself as a regular human being.

Michael J. Fox discusses his new book, Always Looking Up: The Adventures of an Incurable Optimist

Find this article at: http://www.esquire.com/features/what-ive-learned/michaeljfox0108