Justin Long gives credit where credit is due.
The To get chills star, 45, called Michael J. Fox a “brilliant man” during Saturday night’s red carpet for the A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Cure Parkinson’s event in New York City, which raised funds for the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research .
While speaking with PEOPLE, Long explained that the 62-year-old Family ties an alum inspired him to pursue a career as an actor.
“His humor and his timing. And his comedy is, it’s just brilliant,” Long said of some of his favorite things about Fox. “He’s really the reason I became an actor.”
“I admired him so much when he was growing up, and now I admire him exponentially as a man,” he added.
Michael J. Fox poses with Justin Long and Kate Bosworth in November 2023.
Michael Loccisano/Getty
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Long attended the charity event at Casa Cipriani with his wife, Kate Bosworth, who told PEOPLE that the best element of giving support is “laughter.”
The actress (40) also spoke about the relationship between Fox and his wife Tracy Pollan and how she watched them in the documentary And Beyond: The Movie by Michael J. Fox showed that “their love is so much in the foreground”.
“Just to see them support each other and laugh through the hard stuff. The hardest, I mean, the hardest,” Bosworth said. “It’s inspiring to see and it’s touching. It was one of my favorite moments out of so many great moments in his documentary.”
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Earlier this week, Fox shared a candid interview with CBS Morning about the impact of living with Parkinson’s disease since he was diagnosed in 1991. When co-host Nate Burleson asked the actor if he ever felt depressed or self-doubt, Fox replied, “Yesterday at 3:57 in the afternoon.”
“The positivity is really genuine and I really feel it, and it’s genuine, but it’s hard to fight and it’s hard to win,” he added.
The actor – who founded the Michael J. Fox Foundation in 2000 – added that people should “admit to ourselves what we’ve gone through in life on life’s terms”.
Fox also talked about his relationship with Pollan, 63, who he said “was able to get me through it and go through it with me. And she’s been doing it for 35 years.”
“We knew the bus was coming and we knew it was going to hit, but we didn’t know how far it was or how fast it was going,” Fox added. “At any moment she would be forgiven for saying, ‘I’m just going out.’ But she didn’t do that.”
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Source: HIS Education