Fox went to read for the Ordinary People role that eventually won Timothy Hutton an Oscar, but failed to make an impression. ![]() One of Fox’s earliest – and worst – audition experiences came at the hands of Robert Redford. Photograph: Atlantic Releasing Corporation Fox with Susan Ursitti in ‘Teen Wolf’ (1985) Robert Redford was rude to him in an audition And the jobs he did get paid peanuts, leaving him subsisting on packets of Smuckers jam in his tiny apartment. In the doc, he remembers his early days in Hollywood involving a tonne of auditions, but also a slew of rejections. In an alternative reality to rival the dystopian Hill Valley of Back to the Future Part II, Fox planned to follow in his brother’s footsteps and become a construction worker if his acting career didn’t ignite. He might have worn a hard hat instead of a baseball cap In the doc, Fox admits that he could be ‘a dick’ in those early ego-led days, but adds: ‘In the face of all evidence to the contrary, I was a massive bath of fear and professional anxiety.’ It all worked out swimmingly for him and Pollan, though: they were married three years later. Unintimidated, and to new-found respect from her co-star, Pollan retorted that he was ‘a complete and utter fucking asshole’. The fast-rising Fox, the 300 lb gorilla on the TV show’s set, welcomed her with a cutting aside about her post-lunch garlic breath. He could be ‘a complete and utter asshole’įox met his future wife Tracy Pollan in 1985 on the set of Family Ties when she was cast as Alex P Keaton’s girlfriend, Ellen Reed – and it didn’t go that well to begin with. That first stab at acting didn’t come until he was 16, and was mostly driven by the fact that drama class ‘was where the girls were’. Photograph: Universal Pictures Michael J Fox in ‘The Secret of My Success’ (1987) His first acting role was as Rumpelstiltskinĭiminutive and blessed with a magical touch, the Grimm brothers’ folk favourite seems like an apt first role for the 5′ 4″ actor. ‘The walking thing really freaks people out,’ he notes, dryly, at one point. But that steel shines through – as does his sense of humour. because Fox was non-stop as a kid (‘I couldn’t be still’, he says) and Parkinson’s manifests in shaking and balance issues. I’m a tough son of a bitch,’ he tells Guggenheim in one of the film’s talking head interviews. Okay, not literally in the scurring-around-your-basement sense, but figuratively as a survivor and no one’s idea of a victim, Fox identifies with cockroaches. A formal diagnosis came in 1991 but, as the doc charts, it’d be seven more years before he revealed it publicly. It turned out to be a sign of Parkinson’s disease. ‘The trembling was a message from the future,’ Fox recalls. The reconstruction shows Fox waking up after a night’s drinking with his old friend and Doc Hollywood co-star Woody Harrelson, shaking and unable to focus on the finger in front of his face. Fox Movie opens, Apocalypse Now like, with a blurrily drunken hotel room encounter with its subject. Initially, he thought his Parkinson’s disease was a bad hangover Here are five unexpected revelations from the documentary. With new interviews, archive footage, some smart reconstructions and a tonne of spiky wit and still-boyish charm, the 61-year-old looks back at his Hollywood breakthrough, that cruel Parkinson’s diagnosis and a stirring comeback story in a heart-filling story of resilience under pressure. Fox Movie, a buoyant but bittersweet portrait of the kid from Edmonton, Canada who became a Hollywood icon.ĭirected by Oscar-winning filmmaker Davis Guggenheim ( An Inconvenient Truth), Still charts the euphoric highs and deep lows experienced by the one-time Marty McFly and Alex P Keaton. This year there are two to pick from: Pretty Baby: Brooke Shields, about 1970s child star Brooke Shields and her bitter introduction to Hollywood, and Still: A Michael J. One thing the Sundance Film Festival delivers almost without fail every year is a new doc that offers startling insights about the troubled life of a much-loved public figure – or, as was the case last year, Kanye West.
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