Turning fully toward the glass, I consider what I see. This reflected version of myself, wet, shaking, rumpled, pinched, and slightly stoop, would be alarming were it not for the self-satisfied expression pasted across my face. I would ask the obvious question, 'what are you smiling about?' But I already know the answer: 'It just gets better from here.'

I mean, I enjoy my work as an actor. But to make a difference in people's lives through advocacy and through supporting research - that's the kind of privilege that few people will get, and it's certainly bigger than being on TV every Thursday for half an hour.

The moment I understood this - that my Parkinson's was the one thing I wasn't going to change - I started looking at the things I could change, like the way research is funded.

You know what's cool? My kids think I'm ordinary.

I don't subscribe to any particular doctrine or ideology. I just think that there's kind of a good and bad, the good being life in its purest, happiest form, and the other being the darker side of existence.

I don't look at life as a battle or as a fight. I don't think I'm scrappy. I'm accepting.

Life is the power that's greater than I can ever comprehend.