Why Lea Thompson Was Snooty to Michael J. Fox on Back to the Future

Lea Thompson didn’t initially hit it off with Michael J. Fox when she met him on the Back to the Future set.

“I was friends with Eric Stoltz who had just gotten fired,” Thompson, 63, shared in an interview on the “Still Here Hollywood” podcast on Monday, September 30. “I had already done a movie called The Wildlife with him and so he was a friend of mine.”

Thompson noted that she remembered being “really snooty” to Fox, also 63, due to a “big division between movie stars and TV stars” at that time.

“It’s not as much [anymore], that’s for sure. It’s not the same as it was then,” she said before quipping, “So I remember being like, ‘He’s just a TV star and I’m a movie star. I was in Jaws 3D.’”

Thompson added that it took her “a while to warm up to” Fox, but she ended up enjoying working with him.

“He was so funny and so fun to act with,” she gushed. “I had done some scenes with Eric already and then had to redo them with Michael so I could see how they were completely different scenes.”

Thompson played Lorraine Baines McFly, the mom to Marty McFly (Fox) in the 1985 film and its two sequels. The trilogy also starred Christopher Lloyd, Crispin Glover and Thomas F. Wilson.

Fox, Lloyd, 85, and Thompson reunited last year and posed for pictures together at the premiere of Back to the Future: The Musical in New York City.

Thompson has previously reflected on the significance of Back to the Future, explaining why it is still such a popular film years later.

“I think there’s a lot of reasons. One, it’s a great script. It’s still studied by screenplay experts,” she shared in an October 2015 interview with HuffPost Live. “Another reason, I think, is because it’s something that you wanna share with your kids because the central theme in my opinion is that one moment can change your life, one moment of courage could change everything about not only your life, but your children’s lives. I think that’s a really important thing to share with your family and your kids.”

Fox, who retired from acting in 2020, also credits the film for uplifting his career.

“I was thinking of working on the fish dock or joining the military like my dad. Then suddenly I found myself on a set with Steven Spielberg,” he shared at the Back to the Future 30th anniversary event in July 2015. “The nadir and the peak of my career happened at the same time.”