Michael J. Fox Reveals Joke That Won Over Lea Thompson After Rocky Start to Filming "Back to the Future" Victoria Edel, Lex GoldsteinOctober 16, 2025 at 2:29 AM 0 Amblin Entertainment/Universal Pictures/Kobal/Shutterstock Lea Thompson (left) and Michael J. Fox in 'Back to the Future' Michael J.
- - Michael J. Fox Reveals Joke That Won Over Lea Thompson After Rocky Start to Filming "Back to the Future"
Victoria Edel, Lex GoldsteinOctober 16, 2025 at 2:29 AM
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Lea Thompson (left) and Michael J. Fox in 'Back to the Future' -
Michael J. Fox opened up about how he used a joke to win over Back to the Future costar Lea Thompson
Thompson was not happy Fox had been cast as Marty McFly because he was a TV actor and was replacing her friend
Fox and Thompson, who played Marty's teenage mom, eventually became friends
Michael J. Fox is a true believer in the power of humor.
Fox opened up about how he used humor to win over Back to the Future costar Lea Thompson during an Oct. 13 event at 92NY in New York City. The actor, 64, just released his new book Future Boy, which chronicles his experience filming Family Ties and Back to the Future at the same time.
Fox, who co-wrote the book with Nelle Fortenberry, played Marty McFly in the iconic 1985 science fiction comedy. His character travels back in time to when his parents were in high school, and Lea Thompson's character, Lorraine Baines, grows up to be Marty's mom.
Amblin Entertainment/Universal Pictures/Kobal/Shutterstock
From left: Crispin Glover, Lea Thompson and Michael J. Fox in 'Back to the Future'
Fox remembered how the first scene he shot with Thompson, 64, was also the first time their characters met on screen — after Marty has been hit by a car and Lorraine thinks his name is Calvin Klein because that's what's on his underwear. Marty falls out of her bed, which was a piece of physical comedy he ad-libbed. Director Robert Zemeckis joked, "Get the man a cushion next time."
"Lea was so good," Fox said. "The way, to me, to a woman's heart was, was through a joke. So I wrote a joke for her." In the scene, Marty asks where his pants are now, and originally, Lorraine says, "Over there." Fox said he pitched a change to Zemeckis, even though it was only his "second night" on the job. Fox thought a funnier line would be, "Over there, on my hope chest." Zemeckis agreed and it was put into the film.
"That's my world, a world where we pitch jokes all the time," Fox said of his work on sitcoms. When Thompson said the new line, "She did it so good," Fox said. ". . . It was dynamite, and I knew I was in."
In Future Boy, Fox wrote about how, when he first joined the cast, Thompson was standoffish with him. That was because Fox was replacing her friend Eric Stoltz in the lead several weeks into production after filmmakers had decided Stoltz wasn't the right fit. Stoltz and Thompson had already made the 1984 movie The Wild Life together. Plus, Fox was a sitcom star at a time when TV stars didn't cross over into movies.
Moviestore/Shutterstock From right: Michael J. Fox and Laa Thompson in 'Back to the Future'
"She was not ready to work with a TV actor," Fox told PEOPLE of Thompson in an interview published this month. "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."
But Fox was under so much pressure because he was also filming his role as young Republican Alex P. Keaton on Family Ties that he barely noticed Thompson's antipathy. "I was so unaware of what anyone else thought because I was so consumed with what I thought," the actor said. The pair eventually did get along and remain friends.
Because Fox missed out on the weeks of pre-production before Back to the Future got rolling, he had "no time" to find a "common language" with the cast and crew.
"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."
Back to the Future had two sequels, 1989's Back to the Future Part II and 1990's Back to the Future Part III.
Future Boy is available now, wherever books are sold.
on People
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