NEED TO KNOW
When Michael J. Fox began filming Back to the Future, costar Lea Thompson was initially “snooty” to him before warming up, he recounts in his new book Future Boy.
Thompson had her reasons for the way she felt. Fox had replaced her pal Eric Stoltz in the lead role of Marty McFly several weeks into production after filmmakers had decided Stoltz (who had already made the 1984 movie The Wild Life with Thompson) wasn’t the right fit.
On top of that, Fox, now 64, was the star of a sitcom — Family Ties — at a time when Hollywood had a strict hierarchy where film actors were considered above TV actors.
“She was not ready to work with a TV actor,” Fox tells PEOPLE in a new interview about the book, which features conversations with costars like Thompson and co-writer and director Robert Zemeckis.
Mark Seliger
“She’s really honest about that and really sweet about it. She said she thought I was an imposter, and she was pissed off because her friend was no longer in the movie,” Fox continues of Thompson. (To this day, the two are friends and appear at fan conventions together.)
Not that her attitude at the time registered with Fox. “I didn’t notice,” he recalls. “I was so unaware of what anyone else thought because I was so consumed with what I thought.”
Indeed, Fox was under an enormous amount of pressure on several fronts.
For one, he was exhausted. He played young Republican Alex P. Keaton on Family Ties during the day, and then reported the Back to the Future set at night for duty as Marty McFly. He’d get home, sleep a couple of hours, and then go back to Paramount Studios in Hollywood to make Family Ties again.
Flatiron Books
Fox also knew he had to make the film succeed. Unbeknownst to the actor in 1984, he had been the first choice to play Marty, but Family Ties creator Gary David Goldberg shut down the idea, citing Fox’s prior commitment to the show.
The filmmakers then hired Mask actor Stoltz for the lead role instead, but after a few weeks of filming, they realized he wasn’t the right fit. Stoltz was fired — and Goldberg agreed to let Fox make the movie as long as it didn’t interfere with filming Family Ties.
The shooting schedule was reworked to fit Fox’s TV schedule, and several scenes needed to be re-shot, too. Because the film was already in mid-production, Fox had “no time” to prepare.
“I talk in the book about how you’ve got to find that common language with the film, everybody speaking the same language. I had no time to do that. I had to jump in and hope that my things sync up with everything,” he says.
“It was high stakes for everybody,” he says, adding, “I just wanted to be good.”
It wasn’t until many, many years later that Fox came to appreciate his performance.
He was home with his wife Tracy Pollan and their kids decorating the Christmas tree when he walked into another room and heard the opening music of Back to the Future.
“I was drawn into it. I sat down. Half an hour later, 45 minutes later, Tracy said, ‘Where are you?’” remembers Fox.
“I said, ‘You know what? It’s really good. I’m really good.’”
Take PEOPLE with you! Subscribe to PEOPLE magazine to get the latest details on celebrity news, exclusive royal updates, how-it-happened true crime stories and more — right to your mailbox.
Future Boy comes out on Oct. 14 and is available now for preorder, wherever books are sold.
