Back To The Future star Michael J. Fox is alive and well, contrary to what CNN may have you think.
The news outlet published an article and video titled “Remembering the Life of Actor Michael J. Fox” on Wednesday, sending the internet into a tailspin with fears that Fox, 64, had died.
The article even forced the actor’s representation to issue a statement confirming his health.
“Michael is doing great. He was at PaleyFest yesterday. He was on stage and was giving interviews,” representatives of the actor said in a statement to TMZ.
There have been no reports of the actor’s death, and CNN has since removed the article.
The article appears to be either a misguided retrospective headline or a prewritten obituary mistakenly published too early. It is common practice for news outlets to outline and prewrite obituaries for celebrities who are ill or elderly.
“The package was published in error; we have removed it from our platforms and send our apologies to Michael J. Fox and his family,” a CNN spokesperson said in a statement to the Daily Beast.
CNN published the article just one day after the actor made a surprise appearance at the Los Angeles PaleyFest to celebrate the just-wrapped third season of Apple TV’s Shrinking on Tuesday.
In the show, Fox guest stars as Gary, a patient who commiserates with his therapist, Paul, played by Harrison Ford, over their shared Parkinson’s diagnoses. The two actors embraced onstage to loud applause from the audience.
“We’re on the same s--tty train to sucksville,” Fox says in his first interaction with Ford on the show, which is helmed by his former Spin City collaborator Bill Lawrence.
Fox first revealed his illness in 1998, seven years after he was diagnosed with the incurable condition at the age of 29. In the years since its inception in 2000, his Michael J. Fox Foundation has funded more than $2.5 billion in Parkinson’s research.
In 2023, he earned an honorary Oscar for his humanitarian efforts, followed a year later by the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Joe Biden.
“Michael raises more money for and has done more Parkinson’s research than almost anybody in the world," Ford, 83, said in a joint interview with Fox for Vanity Fair.
In an interview about Shrinking, which ended Fox’s five-year acting hiatus, the actor said the show allowed him to raise more awareness of his illness.
“I had no idea Parkinson’s would take as much from it as it would,” Fox said. “But I had no idea it would give as much to me as it has.”
Despite what CNN wrote, Fox is as vibrant and vital as ever. His Shrinking guest role only displayed that the actor’s comedic timing and acting chops have not waned.
