Lea Thompson had to 'warm up' to Michael J. Fox on Back to the Future after Eric Stoltz was fired

Lea Thompson had to work through a few issues before she was able to develop chemistry with Michael J. Fox on the Back to the Future shoot.

When asked if she "hit it off right away" with Fox by Steve Kmetko on his Still Here Hollywood podcast, Thompson answered, "probably not because I was friend with Eric Stoltz, who had just gotten fired." While Thompson hadn't yet worked with Fox, she explained that, "I did a movie called The Wild Life" with Stoltz before Back to the Future, "and so he was a friend of mine. And then I did Some Kind of Wonderful after."

Back to the Future director Robert Zemeckis explained in 2015 that while Fox was his first choice for Marty McFly, Fox was unavailable due to scheduling conflicts, leading to the casting of Stoltz. “Eric is a really good actor, and I made the decision to put him in the movie, but it turned out that his instincts and the type of the comedy [of] the film we were doing weren’t really gelling,” Zemeckis explained.

So when Fox did become available, Stoltz was fired, and Fox was hired. But it wasn't so simple for Thompson.

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"I remember specifically being really snooty because there was a big division between movie stars and TV stars at that point," she added. "I remember being like, 'He's just a TV star and I'm a movie star — I was in Jaws 3D.' So I think it took me a while to warm up to him."

Thompson and Fox ended up getting along great, as can be evinced not just by rewatching their winning dynamic in Back to the Future, but the number of reunions they're participated in together over the years.

"He was so funny and fun to act with," Thompson recalled, explaining that she'd "done some scenes with Eric already, and then I did them with Michael, so I could see how they were completely different scenes."

"You're a genius with physical comedy. I remember just watching you and trying to learn," Thompson told Fox in 2010 for Entertainment Weekly's 25th anniversary look-back at the film. Fox told Thompson the same, recalling "our scene together, that bedroom scene was just great. You were so great in that. All the stumbling around I did, that was a direct reaction to the pressure she was putting on me with the eyes and the intensity. What she was doing was so great."

In a 2019 EW oral history of Some Kind of Wonderful, Thompson remembered thinking her "career was over" after Howard the Duck bombed, but then "my friend Eric Stoltz [rode] up to the top of Laurel Canyon and said, 'Howard Deutch wants you to reconsider the part of Amanda Jones.' Four or five days later I was shooting."

Both Some Kind of Wonderful and Back to the Future were hits for Thompson, and she remains close with both of her costars.