Michael J. Fox Says He’s Friends with Eric Stoltz, the Actor First Cast (and Then Fired) as “Back to the Future”’s Marty McFly

• Michael J. Fox and Christopher Lloyd reunited once again last weekend on a Back to the Future panel at Calgary Expo in Canada

• The two told stories of how they didn’t at first have their now-iconic roles, though for very different reasons

• Fox also shared the story behind the film’s script: one man’s tribute to his own father

While Michael J. Fox wasn’t the first actor hired to play Marty McFly in the 1985 film Back to the Future, the man who was, actor Eric Stoltz, has no hard feelings — in fact, the two are friends.

Fox, 63, spoke about the film’s initial casting alongside Christopher Lloyd at a Back to the Future panel at Calgary Expo, a fan convention held April 24 to 27, 2025, in Canada.

Fox explained that he was indeed the first choice to play Marty McFly in the film, but, at the time of filming, he was also filming the television show Family Ties and the producer of that show told the producers of Back to the Future the actor wouldn’t be available.

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So, actor Eric Stoltz was cast as McFly. But the decision was short-lived, as producers determined they still wanted Fox for the role.

“It was a wonderful actor — great actor — who since has become a friend of mine and someone I’ve had a good time with, talking about this turn in our lives and how we both ended up in different places,” Fox said of Stoltz. “I’ve learned a lot about acceptance and perseverance from him. He’s a great guy, Eric Stoltz.”

The decision to cast Stoltz instead of Fox wasn’t due to Fox personally turning down the role, however. “I didn’t know about [the film], so they cast another actor,” Fox recounted.

Then, in 1984, he was called into the office of the producer of Family Ties. “I thought he was going to fire me, because I had just done Teen Wolf,” Fox said to laughs from the audience.

But ultimately the producer handed him the script for Back to the Future, telling him, “Take this home and read it and tell me if you want to do it.”

“So, I picked up the script, I held it in my hand, I put it down and said, ‘I love it.’ “

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Fox was then told he would have to do both projects at the same time and would not get time off to balance the roles. So, he said, “I showed up to every second of Family Ties and every second of Back to the Future. They believed in me so much from the onset and I didn’t want to let them down.”

The casting of Lloyd’s character was also a brief struggle, with the actor explaining that he was working as a theater actor in New York City when he got the call about playing Doc Brown in the film. He initially turned down the role.

“I got the script [and] I thought, ‘I don’t want to do this. I’m going back to New York,’ ” Lloyd recounted. “I took the script for Back to the Future and put it in the waste basket. That’s a seriously ill-thought career choice. I retrieved it, looked at it a second time, went back to L.A., met [director] Bob Zemeckis and that was it.”

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Elsewhere in the panel discussion, Fox spoke about how unique the script for Back to the Future was, noting that most modern-day films center on IP that already exists — superhero stories, for instance.

“It doesn’t happen anymore — people have ideas based on the experiences of their life or whatever. Now it’s all — God bless ’em, it’s all the franchise stuff and the Marvel stuff, which is great,” Fox said.

Fox went on to speak about how co-writer Bob Gale came up with the idea for the film.

“He went home to his high school reunion, and he saw a picture of his dad in high school, and he wondered, ‘What was he like?’ Later that night, he wrote a script, and that was Back to the Future,” Fox said.

He continued: “I think that’s what’s so special about the movie. It wasn’t built to be a franchise. It wasn’t built to be anything other than a guy who’s wondering about his parents — wondering what it would be like to be friends with his parents.”

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