Playing against type

When Denis Leary first approached his longtime friend Michael J. Fox about taking on the role of a paraplegic in the FX firefighter drama “Rescue Me,” Fox was surprised, to say the least.

“My first question was, ‘You’re aware I have Parkinson’s, right?’ ” Fox explained. “You’re aware that I can’t stop moving, and you’re asking me to play a guy who can’t move.’ And he said, ‘No, I get that.’ ”

The resulting character is Dwight, a man who’s been literally and figuratively crushed under the weight of a car accident that left him in a wheelchair and his cousin and brother dead.

The irony of playing a guy who’s forced to deal with the toughest that life can dish out isn’t lost on the 48-year-old Fox. Dwight “was so like my dark side, my shadow,” he says. “In that way, the character is very familiar to me because if I had reacted to [the] drastic change in the direction of my life, it may have been the way that Dwight had.”

Dwight’s reckless drinking and pill-popping lends an even darker note to the post-9/11 series, as he rivals Leary’s Tommy Gavin for the title of most self-destructive character on the small screen. “It was just so much fun and such a beautifully crafted character,” Fox says.

Although these days Fox spends more time devoted to his work with the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research, for which he is chairman, as well as being a key supporter of stem-cell research, his “Rescue Me” role is among a handful he’s enjoyed taking on in the last five years, including “Scrubs” in 2004 and “Boston Legal” in 2006.

He says that he likes the occasional acting and that having the support of the writers and crew has made continuing his craft easier. “They were willing to work with me if I needed a little extra time,” Fox explains. “And the very talented writers and show runners were able to create room within the character for my eccentricities and my quirks. So I felt really welcome.”

But while Dwight dwells in the dark, the actor who plays him is demonstrating that optimism is the new black. Fox’s second book, “Always Looking Up: The Adventures of an Incurable Optimist,” debuted at No. 2 on the New York Times bestseller list.

In the book, Fox examines the decade since he publicly revealed his Parkinson’s disease diagnosis, starting with his decision to leave his successful ABC series “Spin City” and retire from full-time acting. With a quick wit and a matter-of-fact voice, the actor-turned-writer reveals that his constant desire to overcome obstacles contributes to his optimism. In other words, don’t fret over the things you can’t change. “I don’t have a choice about whether or not I have Parkinson’s,” Fox says. “But surrounding that one non-choice is an infinite amount of choices I can make.”

Fox’s optimistic outlook might have always been palpable in his roles in “Family Ties,” “Back to the Future” and his final TV series, but it wasn’t until he wrote his first book, “Lucky Man: A Memoir,” which chronicled how he dealt with his Parkinson’s diagnosis, that he realized how much his bright outlook had contributed to his life.

“When the book came out, people said that it was an intensely optimistic experience for them,” he recalls. “It was an undeniable fact that I was optimistic, but I didn’t know why.”

His examination of the nature of optimism led to “Always Looking Up,” as well as a complementary hourlong special on ABC that aired in May and won its 10 p.m. Thursday time slot with 10.6 million viewers. “It’s a nice nontoxic hour of television, but it’s not simplistic,” Fox says of the special. “There’s some pretty interesting and demanding ideas that require more than staring at the TV.”

Although Fox has some clear ideas about why maintaining a positive perspective is important, he isn’t attempting to get into the self-help business. “I’m not trying to be prescriptive in my work as a writer,” he says. “But I do believe strongly that our lives are capacious enough to hold both our disappointments and our successes. And if you allow for the possibilities of something better, you move toward it instinctively.”

He sees that dichotomy relating to the current economic crisis, as well. “People are realizing that we’re not going to get a lighter load. We need broader shoulders, and we need to accept that and work together. A lot is achieved out of shared experience.”

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