Michael J. Fox achieved breakout success when he made his debut in the early 1980s as Alex P. Keaton on the beloved sitcom Family Ties. What the show's viewers could not have known at that time, though, was just how impressive of a career the Canadian-born actor would go on to have. Indeed, in the four decades since Family Ties premiered, Fox has starred in more than his fair share of acclaimed films and TV series and has played a number of notable characters, one in particular being one of the most iconic characters in cinema history.
Fox has also been an incredible activist. His own experience with Parkinson's disease led to the founding of the Michael J. Fox Foundation in 2000. The goal of the non-profit organization is to fund research and to find a cure for Parkinson's disease. Fox has raised awareness for Parkinson's disease around the world and has become a global advocate for finding a cure for it. To date, the Michael J. Fox Foundation has raised and funded a monumental $2 billion for Parkinson's disease research programs. Absolutely determined to make a positive impact on the world and to not allow a debilitating disease to take him down, Fox has crafted a legacy for himself that extends far beyond his considerable contributions to film and television.
Below, A.frame presents six essential, must-see films from Fox's acting career.
There aren't many 1980s films more iconic or more beloved than Back to the Future. Co-written and directed by Robert Zemeckis, this sci-fi comedy follows Marty McFly (Fox), a high schooler who accidentally travels 30 years into the past only to find himself face-to-face with his parents' younger selves. Stranded in the 1955, Marty has to get back to the future (his present) with the help of his mentor, friend, and the inventor of the DeLorean time machine that sent him traveling through time from the '80s to the '50s, the eccentric Doc Brown (Christopher Lloyd).
Co-starring Lea Thompson, Crispin Glover, Thomas F. Wilson, Claudia Wells, and James Tolkan, Back to the Future was the highest-grossing film of 1985. The film had two equally captivating and entertaining sequels, Back to the Future Part II (1989), in which Marty ends up in the future in 2015 and then in an alternate 1985 and then back in 1955, and Back to the Future Part III (1990), a Western that sees Marty and Doc end up in 1885 in the Wild West.
A cinematic masterpiece of the highest order, Back to the Future is funny, thrilling, and heartwarming. The story is riveting, the acting is marvelous, the editing is incredible, and the score is absolutely magical. Back to the Future is quite simply cinema at its most charming, thanks largely to the performance that Fox gives as Marty McFly.
The film received four Oscar nominations: Best Original Screenplay, Best Sound, Best Sound Effects Editing, and Best Original Song for the song "The Power of Love." Back to the Future went on to win the Oscar for Best Sound Effects Editing. In 2007, the film was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress.
Released the same year as Back to the Future, this supernatural teen comedy helped cement Fox as the kind of rare, charismatic star who could truly carry his own films. Fox stars in this Rod Daniel-directed romp as Scott Howard, a teenager whose life is turned upside down when he realizes that he is a werewolf. The film's success at the box office led to the creation of a Teen Wolf animated series, as well as a 1987 sequel that Fox, notably, did not appear in. A live-action TV series of the same name premiered on MTV in 2011, nearly 30 years after Teen Wolf first hit theaters in August of 1985.
This Brian De Palma-directed war drama stars Fox as a Vietnam soldier who gets assigned to a squad that traffics in far more sadistic methods than he'd like. When his fellow soldiers, led by Sergeant Tony Meserve (Sean Penn), decide to kidnap and assault a local Vietnamese girl, Max Eriksson (Fox) is forced to take a dangerous stand. Based on a disturbing true story, Casualties of War is a purposefully difficult and unnerving drama. Fox's performance in the film only helped to further establish him as an actor capable of inhabiting darker roles than the ones he had previously received attention for playing.
Written by Aaron Sorkin and directed by Rob Reiner, The American President follows a widowed U.S. president (Michael Douglas) as he begins to fall in love with an environmental lobbyist (Annette Bening). Fox stars in the film as Lewis Rothschild, a domestic policy advisor to Douglas' lovestruck commander-in-chief. The film received an Oscar nomination for Best Original Musical or Comedy Score.
A spoof of 1950s sci-fi movies, Tim Burton's comedy Mars Attacks! follows a number of humans after Earth is invaded by a race of technologically advanced, ruthless, and sadistically funny Martians. The film's all-star ensemble cast includes everyone from Jack Nicholson, Annette Bening, and Glenn Close to Tom Jones, Pierce Brosnan, and Natalie Portman. For his part, Fox makes a lasting impression as Jason Stone, a vain news reporter who desperately wants to capitalize in some way on the alien invasion.
Atlantis: The Lost Empire, one of Disney's animated offerings from the early 2000s, follows a group of explorers as they set out to find the legendary lost nation of Atlantis. Fox leads the film's voice cast as Milo Thatch, a well-meaning, enterprising linguist, cartographer, and researcher. Fox's voice performance in this animated adventure showcases just how much heart and energy he can bring to a character using just his voice.
