John C. McGinley had just become a dad to Max, who was born with Down syndrome in 1997, when he sat down with his agent to talk about his career.
The advice he received was meant to protect him: keep the situation completely private, because Hollywood studios might hesitate to hire him if he talked about it. John looked at him and said: “You’re fired”.
From then on, he took Max everywhere. They walked red carpets together, appeared on talk shows, and visited film sets, at a time when people with developmental disabilities were often kept out of public view. That fatherly love grew into decades of advocacy for inclusion and equal opportunity.
Once, a journalist asked him if he had ever wished his son were normal. John didn’t hesitate: Max was normal, and the question was what was wrong. Today, Max is an adult who works and takes part in his community, and his father says he never limited him for even a single moment.