If there was one movie that changed Michael J. Fox’s life as an actor, it was “Back to the Future.”
During the Oct. 19 episode of Sunday Sitdown, Fox recalled how he got the role of Marty McFly in the 1985 flick. He said he was in the middle of shooting his Emmy-winning series “Family Ties” when the show’s creator, Gary David Goldberg, called him into his office.
At the time, Fox was 23 years old.
“I had just done ‘Teen Wolf,’ and I thought maybe he saw ‘Teen Wolf’ and was firing me,” Fox said with a laugh.
“But I went into the office, and he had this envelope. He said, ‘I didn’t know how to tell you this, but a few months ago, Bob Zemeckis gave it to me and said they had this movie they wanted you to do,'” Fox continued. “He said, ‘If you want to do it, we’ll make it work.’ And I picked up the envelope and went ‘I love it.'”
Fox had signed on to one of the biggest role of his life — and he didn’t even read the script beforehand.
Though it was a gamble, it was a huge one that paid off. He says his life changed drastically after starring in “Back to the Future.”
Michael J. Fox is going “Back to the Future”! The legendary actor reminisces about the classic hit in honor of the film’s upcoming 35th anniversary with Access Daily hosts Scott Evans and Kit Hoover. The star reveals what makes the flick totally timeless. Plus, Michael gets candid about his fight to find a cure for Parkinson’s disease with his nonprofit foundation, The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research.
“Huge difference,” he said. “And in terms of my family, they were so amazing, because they had no reference for this.”
Fox recalled this moment in his new memoir, “Future Boy: Back to the Future and My Journey Through the Space-Time Continuum.”
In the book, he recalled a Christmas he spent with his family in Canada in 1984, a year before the film came out. He described this holiday as his “last brush with the old world.”
“When I won my first Emmy, I brought it home to Canada and we put it on a table. And we’re all sitting around playing board games and drinking and stuff, visiting. And I went to bed, and my Emmy was on this table,” he told Willie. “Woke up the next morning. My Emmy was there with my dad’s bowling trophy, my brother’s boxing trophy, my sister’s skating trophy, and they’re all around it. I said, ‘That’s great.'”
Thanks to his family, Fox says he’ll “never get out of control.”
“They’ll keep me,” he laughed.
This story first appeared on TODAY.com. More from TODAY:
Michael J. Fox got a standing ovation at the National Board of Review Awards this week.
