Michael J. Fox Latest Victim of Celebrity Death Hoax

Despite what a hoax claimed this weekend, beloved actor Michael J. Fox is still alive.

On Sunday, a site claiming to be Yahoo News published an obituary for Fox under the headline “Beloved Actor and Back to the Future Star Michael J. Fox Has Died at the Age of 57.”

The hoax site claimed Fox died on Aug. 2 at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. The site even claimed Los Angeles County Chief Coroner Jonathan Lucas said Fox developed pneumonia, linked to his Parkinson’s disease. “Tragically, Fox died at 11:24 this morning. Doctors confirmed Fox passed away peacefully and was surrounded by friends and family,” the hoax site read.

As Snopes confirmed, Fox is alive. The Yahoo News hoax site was bogus, and uses the URL yahoonews-us.com. The real Yahoo News can be found at Yahoo.com/news. No legitimate media outlet reported on Fox’s supposed death and the Michael J. Fox Foundation did not issue a statement on his health.

The hoax site might have been trying to piggy-back on news this spring that Fox underwent successful spinal surgery, although it was unrelated to his Parkinson’s. The surgery forced Fox to pull out of the Calgary Comic and Entertainment Expo in April, meaning he missed a reunion with Back to the Future co-stars Christopher Lloyd, Lea Thompson and Thomas F. Wilson.

Fox has been fighting Parkinson’s disease since 1991 and went public with his diagnosis in 1998. Since then, he has been one of the most high-profile Parkinson’s patients in the world, famously refusing to let the disease stop him from acting.

Earlier this year, he appeared in ABC’s Designated Survivor and recently earned three Emmy nominations for playing Louis Canning on CBS’ The Good Wife. Fox also has five Emmys, with his most recent win coming in 2009 for his guest role on FX’s Rescue Me.

In a 2017 interview with CBS Sunday Morning‘s Jane Pauley, Fox said he does not think a cure for Parkinson’s will be discovered in his lifetime. But he believes his work to raise awareness for the disease and raise money for research is much more important than any of his work.

“I had a moment with somebody and they said, ‘Someday there’s gonna be a cure for Parkinson’s and it’s gonna be because of you.’ And to me this was the first time that it really struck me,” Fox told Pauley. “And I didn’t — and not that I took it seriously, but I feel part of something that is much more special — if it happens it’s much more special than any movie or any TV show.”

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