“I’m a fucking idiot!”: The movie Michael J. Fox regrets turning down
Having enjoyed a hugely successful and awards-laden career, Michael J. Fox hasn’t been left with many regrets from his acting career, albeit with one massive exception.
Rapidly evolving from a sitcom star to a Hollywood player, breakout roles don’t come much bigger or better than Marty McFly in Back to the Future, with Robert Zemeckis’ timeless time-travelling blockbuster standing tall as one of the greatest and most endlessly rewatchable movies in the history of mainstream American cinema.
Fox’s trophy cabinet is well-stocked, too, with the actor winning five Primetime Emmy awards from 18 nominations across Family Ties, Spin City, Rescue Me, The Good Wife, and Curb Your Enthusiasm, with his haul also including four Golden Globes, two Screen Actors Guild Awards, a Grammy, and a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
However, he declined the opportunity to play the lead in a smash hit sensation that earned over half a billion dollars at the box office, became the top-earning release of 1990, the third highest-grossing film ever made at the time, the biggest theatrical hit in the history of the United Kingdom, won two Academy Awards, and was shortlisted for ‘Best Picture’.
Jerry Zucker’s Ghost ended up as a cultural sensation, and in another world, it could have been Fox making sensual supernatural pottery with Demi Moore. The prospect of a paranormal romance with hints of a murder mystery proved to be a hard sell when the project was being pitched around town, and he was far from the only one to turn it down.
During an appearance on The View, host Whoopi Goldberg – who won the ‘Best Supporting Actress’ Oscar for her performance in Ghost – was stunned by the answer when she asked Fox if there were any roles he had the chance to play, rejected, and then ended up regretting.
“There was a chance to work with you that I missed,” he admitted. “They talked to me about Ghost early on. I said, ‘It’ll never work’. I said, ‘Whoopi is great, but it’ll never work’. And then it was great, and huge, and I’m a fucking idiot.” If there was a silver lining, then it comes from the fact Fox was hardly the only established name to pass on the part of Sam Wheat before Patrick Swayze made it his own.
Screenwriter Bruce Joel Rubin revealed that Harrison Ford rejected Ghost no less than three times, and not even Crocodile Dundee was convinced after Paul Hogan knocked it back, too. Bruce Willis called himself “a knucklehead” for following suit, while Tom Hanks, Kevin Bacon, Alec Baldwin, and Tom Cruise were all under consideration at one time or another. Fox was just one of many, then, so he’s hardly the solitary nearly man who regrets it.
