Mom and Dad are both actors, and they met on the set of one of the biggest sitcoms of the 1980s. So when Michael J. Fox and Tracy Pollan started a family, a lot of people assumed at least one of their four kids would end up in front of a camera. The answer turned out to be more interesting than that. Their son is now 37, the twins are 31, and the baby of the family just turned 25 this month.
Fox, 65, still talks about them the way he did when they were small. At the Actor Awards in Los Angeles on March 1, 2026, he looked out at the room and thanked his wife, who he said “gave me four gifts. Our kids, Schuyler, Aquinnah, Esmé and Sam.” He had brought one of those gifts with him that night, and he made sure nobody got the wrong idea about him.
How A ‘Family Ties’ Romance Became A Family Of Six
If you watched Family Ties on Thursday nights, you remember Ellen, the art student who caught Alex P. Keaton’s eye in 1985. Tracy Pollan played her, and the romance didn’t stay on the soundstage. She and Fox married on July 16, 1988, at the West Mountain Inn in Arlington, Vermont. Their son Sam arrived the next spring. As we wrote recently, Pollan had been dating another major ’80s star before Fox came along, which makes the family that followed feel even less like a sure thing.
Fox was diagnosed with young-onset Parkinson’s disease in 1991, when he was 29 and Sam was still a toddler. The twins, Aquinnah and Schuyler, came in 1995, and Esmé followed in 2001. All four grew up with a father who was famous and private about his health at the same time, and Fox has said they simply adjusted to it. When he reaches for something, he explained in 2024 remarks reported by Hello!, his kids “just make the transition” and carry on.
They also grew up guarding their own privacy. When the documentary Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie came out in 2023, Fox joked to People about how hard it was to keep them on camera. “They all gave me their permission,” he said. “And then, at various times, they retracted their permission.” The oldest of them is the one the public has seen the most.
Sam Fox Grew Up To Look Just Like His Dad
Sam Michael Fox was born May 30, 1989, which makes him 37, and photographers have spent years pointing out how much he looks like the young Marty McFly. He didn’t follow his parents into acting, though. Sam works behind the camera, and according to both People and Hello!, his producing credits include the short film Good Grief and Ben Barnes’s music video “11:11.”
His personal life made news last fall. Sam and his longtime girlfriend, Molly Milstein, shared their engagement in February 2024 with a photo from a snowy trip to Vermont. The two married in New York in October 2025 and let the world in a month later with a joint Instagram post. We shared those first wedding photos at the time, and one detail stood out: Sam’s three sisters held up the chuppah over the couple.
Fox has never been shy about how he feels about his only son. “Happy Birthday Sam…No better friend, brother, or son on the planet. Love you so much,” he wrote for Sam’s 36th birthday in 2025. Then came the Actor Awards in March. Sam sat at his father’s table, and Fox pointed him out to a room full of actors. “By the way, he’s not an actor,” Fox said, as reported by Hello! and OK! “He’s just my date.” So which of the Fox kids did end up with acting credits? It wasn’t either of the twins.
Aquinnah And Schuyler Fox Took Very Different Roads
Aquinnah Kathleen Fox and Schuyler Frances Fox were born February 15, 1995, and they turned 31 this year. Aquinnah is named for the town at the western tip of Martha’s Vineyard, one of their father’s favorite places. She went to Duke University, where she studied psychology, visual and media studies and art history, and she danced in Duke’s ballet program on the side. She also interned at her father’s foundation while she was in school. When she graduated in 2018, Fox, who famously left high school early, posted, “You beat me to it!” and added, “Couldn’t be a prouder pop, love you sweetie.”
After starting out in New York, Aquinnah moved to Los Angeles and took a job as an assistant at United Talent Agency. According to People and The List, she now works in television development at Annapurna Pictures. That puts her closer to the family business than any of her siblings, but on the side of the desk where shows get chosen, not cast.
Schuyler went west for college, to Pomona College in California, where she also ran track. After graduating with a psychology degree in 2017, she worked at Columbia University Medical Center on media tools for children with anxiety, and she spent almost a year as a research cohorts officer at The Michael J. Fox Foundation. In 2022 she earned a master’s in education from Harvard, and she now produces educational children’s media in the Boston area. On LinkedIn she describes herself as “passionate about using storytelling for education and impact.”
Schuyler was the first of the kids to marry. She wed her longtime partner in the Catskill Mountains on June 22, 2024, which happened to be her mother’s 64th birthday, and the family has never publicly named the groom. A month earlier, she and her little sister ran the Brooklyn Half Marathon together for Team Fox, and their mother posted, “Could not be more proud of these two! You did it!” That little sister is the answer to the question the whole family keeps hearing.
Esmé Fox Is The One Who Tried Acting
Esmé Annabelle Fox was born November 3, 2001, and she turned 25 last week. She is the only one of the four with real acting credits. Using the name Annabelle Fox, she appeared in Royally in 2017 and Casting Chloe in 2018, and she played a part in two episodes of Bettor Days in 2021, according to Parade. Her father called her “our renaissance gal” in a 2025 Good Morning America piece, and her path since then shows why.
Esmé followed Aquinnah to Duke, and she graduated in May 2025 on Mother’s Day weekend. “Best Mother’s Day ever!” Pollan wrote over photos from the ceremony, with Sam and the twins there for their sister. Esmé had reported for The 9th Street Journal, a Duke-based news site, and interned at the Tampa Bay Times. After graduation she started at NBC, according to reports citing her LinkedIn profile.
In November 2025 she crossed off a personal goal and ran the New York City Marathon in a Team Fox shirt, raising money for Parkinson’s research. “You did it! You are amazing, congratulations! Your dood is very proud,” Fox wrote. For her 25th birthday on November 3, he posted, “Ezzie, you’ve been many people over the last quarter century…all of them fabulous!” Pollan, 66, called her “my heart and soul.” All four of them were in one room together this fall, for the biggest night their father has had in years.
The Night Michael J. Fox Thanked His Kids In Front Of Hollywood
Fox walked away from acting in 2020 and then came back, playing a Parkinson’s patient named Gerry opposite Harrison Ford on Apple TV’s Shrinking in early 2026. The role earned him another Emmy nomination. As we reported in October, he credits Tracy with getting him through all of it, and she has a simple explanation for how they do it. “We just take it one day at a time, and it’s worked,” she told People in November 2025.
On September 14, 2026, the Television Academy gave Fox the Bob Hope Humanitarian Award at the Emmys for his Parkinson’s advocacy. It was his and Pollan’s first Emmys together in 13 years, according to Fox News, and Hello! reported that all four kids came along. Sam is 37 now, the twins are 31 and Esmé is 25, and none of them followed their parents into a career in front of the camera. When their father got to the microphone, he made sure the room knew who had made the work possible. “I thank Tracy and our kids for their sacrifices, for their patience and for their love,” he said. “You have no idea.”
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