Michael J. Fox Broke Records & Rules On Family Ties: All About His Journey On The '80s Sitcom

Early in Michael J. Fox's life, he never could have imagined where his career would lead him. Although Fox's Parkinson's diagnosis and resulting career shift made him reconsider his younger years on television, there's no denying that Fox accomplished something incredible while starring on "Family Ties." He played Alex P. Keaton, a young Reaganite conservative in a family run by two former hippies (Michael Gross and Meredith Baxter), and the character became an icon to a generation used to learning important lessons from sitcoms each week. His groundbreaking run on the show wasn't just a crash course in handling Hollywood fame; his effort to understand himself and his craft led Fox to break both rules and records during his time on the show.

The '80s were a freewheeling time for the actor, who conquered the entertainment industry faster than anyone would have thought possible; according to The New York Times, there was a moment where "Family Ties" was the top sitcom in the country, while the top two spots at the box office were held by "Back to the Future" and "Teen Wolf." Fox told the outlet that he has trouble connecting to the person he used to be, recalling, "It's a different guy ... I wanted to be a rock star. That's what I thought being famous was. But I wasn't a rock star. I was kind of an idiot. I missed the point." While his dream of becoming a rock star didn't quite pan out, his life as a movie star was equally celebrated. Read on to learn more about Fox's time on "Family Ties."

Before there was Michael J. Fox, '80s movie star, he was just an actor looking for his big break. He later told The Archive of American Television that he'd initially gone out for a TV version of "Seven Brides for Seven Brothers," the classic musical about frontier men kidnapping themselves some wives. "I just stunk," Fox admitted, remembering the despair he felt when he realized he couldn't even land a role in a project like that. His agent suggested he audition for "Family Ties" instead, but Fox wasn't sure a sitcom was the kind of thing he wanted to do. "I still had this, like, little hint of snob-ism," he remembered. He auditioned anyway, and as he realized he could find a way into the character of Alex P. Keaton that the producers hadn't expected, he kept getting called back for callbacks.

Eventually, he wound up in front of producer Gary Goldberg, and he auditioned yet again. "He's laughing, and he's laughing, and he's laughing, and I know I'm scoring," Fox recalled. He realized that this is what sitcom acting was about, and he leaned into the reaction he was getting. "The more he laughs, the more I know what he likes," Fox explained, "and I hit that harder the next time." Ultimately, Goldberg brought in Meredith Baxter for a chemistry read, and even though the actor playing his mother wasn't that much older than Fox, he got the part.

According to Michael J. Fox, it's a good thing "Family Ties" came along when it did because, at the time, he was almost literally a starving artist. "I was figuring out ways to cook cardboard," he joked to The Archive of American Television. "This is that time when you get generic stuff from the supermarket, and it would say, like, 'Peas' on it, you know. 'Pasta.'" Things had gotten so dire just before "Family Ties," in fact, that Fox confessed he'd sold off some of his furniture in order to make rent. He remembered selling his couch to "The Last Starfighter" actor Lance Guest, piece by piece. "He'd come back next week and say, 'Can I have the next section?' And I'd say, 'Unfortunately, yeah,'" he told Route Magazine.

Plenty of actors become unrecognizable after losing weight for a role, but Fox felt that his time eating "bugs and grubs and stuff" during the audition process accidentally helped him land the "Family Ties" part. By the time he made it back for that last audition, he said he looked different than producers had initially seen him. "I had lost weight by that point, because I truly [was in] poverty," he said, "but I looked better and I was leaner, and I got the job." 

"Family Ties" premiered in 1982, and it very quickly skyrocketed Michael J. Fox to fame. In fact, the show was originally supposed to center around the two parents of the Keaton clan, played by Meredith Baxter and Michael Gross, but Fox quickly became the breakout star, to the consternation of his older co-stars. "They really felt like, 'What happened? This was a show about us and then there's this kid,'" Fox explained to Route Magazine. He said he could sense the resentment, so he tried not to make his growing fame a big deal on set. "I could take it one of two ways," he remembered thinking. "I could go, 'Screw you' or I could just go, 'I get it. I'm not trying to rub your nose in it. I can't help that other people are paying me the attention that you may want to get.'"

Despite Fox's meteoric rise to fame, his older co-stars generally look back with mature understanding on the young star's behavior behind the scenes. For instance, Baxter — one of many '80s sitcom moms who are unrecognizable today — later told Variety that she thought Fox handled things well on set, all things considered. "I don't think he lorded it over us. At the same time, when someone gets all that attention and all that heat, it's hard for it not to go to their head. You can't fault where that adulation takes you."

Michael J. Fox went from being a struggling actor to one of Hollywood's biggest success stories in a very short amount of time, and he is open now about the fact that all of that fame, money, and access came with a lot of downsides. After all, he'd looked up to rock stars his whole life, and now here was his chance to live life in the fast lane. "As a kid from Canada who liked to drink beer and smoke cigarettes and drive too fast and chase after girls and be an idiot, well, when that opportunity opened up for me, I seized it by the horns and just went for it," he told Route Magazine.

He even remembers it seeping into the way he treated people on the set of "Family Ties." Although his co-stars don't tend to hold it against him, Fox told Variety that he doesn't like seeing archival footage of himself berating the sitcom's writers. "You just want to slap me," he joked. "You just want to go, 'Shut up, sit down, have a Diet Coke and relax and sit in the corner.'" Unfortunately, in the wake of the health issues Fox faced later in his life, he now wonders whether those early hard-partying days may have contributed to his condition. "I could have drank too much at a certain developmental period," he admitted on "CBS Sunday Morning." He added, "Genetics loads the gun, and environment pulls the trigger."

There were plenty of '80s sitcoms that featured actors who would later find major success, but those boundaries were pretty well defined; television actors and film actors were different worlds, and there was rarely any crossover. However, everything changed when Fox was cast in "Back to the Future," putting his Marty McFly opposite Lea Thompson's Lorraine Baines. "She was not ready to work with a TV actor," Fox told People. Thompson — who is now a friend of Fox's — resented the fact that he was on set. He said, "She said she thought I was an imposter."

At the time, however, Fox wasn't too concerned with those opinions because he was too busy shooting "Back to the Future" when he wasn't shooting "Family Ties." He'd shoot scenes for the sitcom during the day, and then at night, he'd work on the film, often sleeping only three hours at a time. "I was running on adrenaline. I barely knew where I was, and I didn't really know what I was doing," he told Variety. "That served the film because Marty's supposed to be disoriented." "Back to the Future" was, of course, a massive success, and it hit theaters at the same time as "Teen Wolf," another film in which Fox played the lead. Suddenly, on the set of "Family Ties," he wasn't just the actor who played Alex. He was now Michael J. Fox: movie star.

In 1986, Michael J. Fox made television history for his role on "Family Ties." That year, at only 25 years old, he became the youngest Emmy winner to take home the trophy in the category of best lead actor in a comedy series. When he took the stage, Fox decided to joke about himself to take some of the pressure off of living up to the honor. He later told The Archive of American Television, "I went up and I kind of 'whooped' for a second, and then I thought, 'Let's get it over with.'"

The famously-short actor then dropped a quip that went down in Hollywood acceptance speech history. "I feel 4 feet tall!" he exclaimed onstage, later recalling, "It was an amazing moment." At the time, Fox had already become a movie star, and backstage after his win, reporters asked the "Back to the Future" star what time in his life he'd like to return to if he had the choice. He replied, "I'd go back about 20 minutes ago, when they say, 'The winner is ... " (via The Hollywood Reporter).

When Michael J. Fox returned to the "Family Ties" set after finding fame as the star of "Back to the Future" and "Teen Wolf," he found that some of his co-stars did, indeed, treat him a little differently. To put it another way, some of his co-stars were not interested in the slightest in letting Fox treat them differently. In the 2023 documentary "Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie," the actor recalled what those times on set were like. "I was the boy prince of Hollywood. I was big, I was bigger than bubblegum," he said (via Express). You think it's made out of brick and rock, but it's not. It's made out of paper and feathers. It's an illusion."

He remembered running afoul of Tracy Pollan, the actor who'd been brought in to play Alex P. Keaton's love interest, Ellen Reed. He cracked a joke about smelling garlic on Pollan's breath, and she let him have it. "That was mean and rude and you're a complete and total f***ing a**hole," he remembered Pollan telling him. He was flabbergasted. "This woman was completely unintimidated by whoever I thought I was," he said in the documentary. "A pig is a pig no matter how many hit movies he's had. At that moment I fell in love with her." Fox and Pollan's "Family Ties" romance soon became a real-life love story, and they've been together ever since.

When it comes to the real-life loves of the "Family Ties" cast, it's impossible not to gush over the relationship between Michael J. Fox and Tracy Pollan. The actors fell in love during "Family Ties," and their on-screen romance won the hearts of fans around the world. In fact, Alex and Ellen were so swoon-worthy that a song associated with the on-screen couple became a real-world hit long after it had been released. Billy Vera & The Beaters first recorded "At This Moment" in the early 1980s, but it wasn't until 1985 that part of the song was used on an episode of "Family Ties." According to Vera, there was only a live version in existence at first, so they would go into the studio to record snippets as the show needed them. "They'd need 12 seconds here, or 20 seconds there," Vera explained on the "Just My Show" podcast (via Songfacts).

As the show kept playing "At This Moment" during pivotal scenes between Alex and Ellen, fans took notice, and the song shot up to the top of the charts. The song became associated with Fox and Pollan, too, and not just with their characters. On an episode of "Rachael Ray," Fox revealed, "Tracy and I couldn't get on a dance floor anywhere in the world for like 10 years without them playing, 'What did you ...'"

Tracy Pollan wasn't the only actor on "Family Ties" that Michael J. Fox maintained a relationship with decades after the show went off the air. He was also around to provide some helpful guidance to Justine Bateman, who played Alex's sister Mallory Keaton. Over the years, Bateman has transformed from "Family Ties" star to filmmaker. She told HuffPost that Fox was an invaluable buddy to have on set in those first few years as the show shot them both to superstardom. "His fame was always bigger than mine. So, it was nice to have a sort of mentor — whether he knew it or not — like a fame mentor for me," she said. Fox was undoubtedly the show's breakout star, though, and Bateman knew it at the time. That, too, was a kind of comfort to her. "And no matter how bad it got for me, whether you're mobbed in a mall or something, I'd always tell myself, Mike's got it worse," she recalled decades later. 

For his part, Fox told Route Magazine that he and Bateman are still friends. "It was really lovely," he said. "Justine and I keep in touch to this day ... Something brings us together and we're really happy to see each other." Fox further detailed their off-screen relationship in his memoir "Future Boy," which included a conversation with Bateman about Alex and Mallory. "Working together was so easy," Bateman told her friend about those days (via Entertainment Weekly). "It was like two well-fitting pieces."

By 1987, Michael J. Fox had broken so many records and rules on the set of "Family Ties" that adding one more feather to his cap just seemed natural. In the show's fifth season, Alex learns that one of his close friends has died in a car crash. The episode that dealt with the fallout was called "A, My Name Is Alex," and it broke just about every rule in the TV-sitcom handbook. First of all, "A, My Name Is Alex" was an hour long, though it was technically two episodes put together. That second half, though, aired without commercials, which was nearly unheard-of at the time for network television. 

Creator Gary Goldberg told The Archive of American Television that they structured the episode like the play "Our Town," featuring Fox giving long soliloquies to an off-camera therapist. "It was really one of the greatest nights of theater I'd ever seen," he said. "Family Ties" continued for a few more years after "A, My Name is Alex," and Fox continued to collect awards for his time on the show. After that episode, though, Goldberg said he was willing to step away. "We had so much respect for those characters and such affection for the audience, so much respect for the audience, and we didn't want to overstay our welcome," he said. "And of course, Mike had a big movie career waiting."