Michael J. Fox

Fox was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease at twenty-nine, in 1991, in the middle of a career built entirely on speed and timing, and he hid it for seven years while continuing to work. Lucky Man covers all of that: the diagnosis, the heavy drinking that followed it, getting sober, and deciding to say so in public. Always Looking Up covers what came afterwards. The research foundation he started in 2000 is now the largest non-profit funder of Parkinson's research anywhere, and he has testified to the American Senate about stem cell research. He is Canadian, left school to act, and has gone on working in parts written around the illness rather than pretending it away.