Michael J. Fox says he 'wouldn't be alive' without wife Tracy Pollan

Michael J. Fox, who met his wife on the set of "Family Ties" and married her in 1988, told The Guardian's Hadley Freeman that he "wouldn't be alive today" if it weren't for Tracy Pollan.

"I don't doubt that. People picture Tracy as this paragon of stoicism, this long-suffering wife, and that's all bulls***," Fox, who suffers from Parkinson's disease, said of his 53-year-old wife.

This is my situation and she deals with it, and I never feel like, 'I'm sorry you have to put up with this' -- it's nothing like that. When I told her about the Parkinson's I said to her, 'Are you in for this?' and she said, 'I'm in for it.' And that was it. It was still a struggle but that was a really great moment.

"She is so funny and she puts up with my happy idiot persona," he added. "She is so HOT!" he added. "Sometimes I look at her and I just can't believe it!"

The 52-year-old actor also credits his wife with pushing him back into acting, the result of which is "The Michael J. Fox Show," an NBC sitcom about a news anchor with Parkinson's Disease.

Fox said that his return to work was also inspired by his desire to put a face on his illness.

"Because of all the things I've done, nobody pities me, and that's great. I couldn't stand it," he said. "Pity is just another form of abuse."

Fox echoed those sentiments in an interview with NBC Bay Area shortly before his show debuted last month.

“The struggle with Mike on the show, and the struggle that I had, was that you want to go work,” he said. “You don't want to be a novelty. And I think Mike Henry avoids it, and I've avoided it.”