Eric Stoltz on Back To The Future

Last week, video footage of Eric Stoltz as Marty McFly in Back To The Future appeared online for the first time. We’ve got it here in case you missed it.

We said in that piece that we had some sympathy for Stoltz, as it’s easy to look back now and say that he wasn’t working in the role, given just how familiar many of us have become with Marty McFly in the guise of Michael J Fox. Furthermore, it’s hard to blame an actor for basically being miscast.

Moviehole, however, got to talk to the man himself, and got him chatting about Back To The Future. Conceding that his career would have taken a very different turn had he finished filming the role that he did five weeks shooting on before he was replaced, Stoltz was asked whether missing out on the film was a sore spot.

“You know, it was twenty-something years ago and I rarely look back, if at all, but in retrospect, I think just getting through that difficult period helped me realise how freeing it really was,” he told the site. “I went back to acting school, I moved to Europe, I did some plays in New York and I actually invested in [pause] myself in a way that was much healthier for me. If I had become a massive star, I don’t know if I wouldn’t have gone into therapy. On the other hand, I would’ve been exceedingly rich, which would’ve been wonderful! [Laughs]”

He also refused to call the filmmakers anything other than “nice people”, and admitted that nobody thought it would be a hit in quite the way that it was.

It’s an interesting interview, which also talks about Caprica, Fast Times At Ridgemont High, and several of his other projects. And you can read the full piece here.