Robert Redford, tooth floss, and the “only disappointment” of Michael J Fox’s early years
Everybody loves Michael J Fox and with good reason.
On screen, he’s Marty bloody McFly, one of the greatest film heroes of the 1980s and a bona fide pop culture icon, wherein the hoverboard-loving, guitar-shredding teen would have been enough to secure his legacy on its own. Then there’s all the stuff he’s done offscreen, with his foundation having raised over $2billion towards researching Parkinson’s disease, and the actor has been incredibly forthcoming about his own battles with the illness; he really is one of the best of us.
However, years before his time-hopping adventures in the DeLorean or even his first appearance on Family Ties, Fox made his big-screen debut in the 1980 film Midnight Madness, a Disney production, which looked good on his CV but failed to set the world on fire critically or financially.
It was a decent first step, but as Fox recalled in his 2002 memoir Lucky Man, he knew he needed to do more, writing, “Determined to stay in LA, I hit the pavement looking for future employment. By autumn, I’d landed my third post-Madness project. My only disappointment was not landing a feature film. I came close on a couple of movies, most notably Ordinary People, earning a callback to see the director. But Robert Redford seemed less than impressed by my reading; he spent the audition flossing his teeth.”
Ordinary People was Redford’s first foray into directing, with the film following the wealthy Jarrett family in the aftermath of their son’s death in an accident. The director’s star power commanded an all-star cast, with Donald Sutherland and Mary Tyler Moore playing the heads of the family, and other roles going to Judd Hirsch, M Emmett Walsh, and Elizabeth McGovern.
Much to Fox’s dismay, the movie was a huge hit, winning three Academy Awards, ‘Best Director’ for Redford, ‘Best Picture’, and another prize that would have made Fox even angrier.
That year’s ‘Best Supporting Actor’ award went to Timothy Hutton, who played the Jarretts’ surviving son, Conrad, and wouldn’t you know it, that’s the same role that Fox auditioned for. To make matters worse, Hutton became the youngest ever victor in this category at the age of just 20, and you just know, Fox, who is almost a full year younger than Hutton, had to have hated that.
As we all know, this was just a minor setback in our hero’s career as the actor continued to find work over the next few years, steadily building his profile and landing his recurring role on Family Ties in 1982. In 1985, he replaced Eric Stoltz in Back to the Future, and the rest is history, and, as for Dutton, sadly, his career stalled after his Oscar win, never quite hitting the big time.
Redford spoke often about how difficult it was to make Ordinary People; he struggled to get his idea off the ground, with a number of key figures refusing to back him. You’d think then that he would have been a bit more courteous to the actors who actually wanted to be in the film.
