Just as Parkinson's isn't a big topic of conversation in my house, neither is my career.

I don't keep up with it all. But Taylor Swift writes songs about everybody she goes out with, right? What a way to build a career.

If you have doubts about someone, lay on a couple of jokes. If he doesn't find anything funny, your radar should be screaming. Then I would say be patient with people who are negative, because they're really having a hard time.

If you were to rush into this room right now and announce that you had struck a deal - with God, Allah, Buddha, Christ, Krishna, Bill Gates, whomever - in which the ten years since my diagnosis could be magically taken away, traded in for ten more years as the person I was before - I would, without a moment's hesitation, tell you to take a hike.

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.

Ironic that in order to do my life's work, I had to quit my day job.

By the time I entered high school, I had forsaken academics altogether in favor of my burgeoning acting career.