Description
BOOK OVERVIEW :
In No Time Like the Future: An Optimist Considers Mortality, Michael shares personal stories and observations about illness and health, aging, the strength of family and friends, and how our perceptions about time affect the way we approach mortality. Thoughtful and moving, but with Fox’s trademark sense of humor, his book provides a vehicle for reflection about our lives, our loves, and our losses.
MICHAEL J. FOX BIOGRAPHY :
Michael Andrew Fox OC (born June 9, 1961), known professionally as Michael J. Fox, is a Canadian-American retired actor, author, film producer, and activist. Beginning his career in the 1970s, he first rose to prominence for portraying Alex P. Keaton on the NBC sitcom Family Ties (1982–1989). Fox achieved further recognition as protagonist Marty McFly in the Back to the Future film trilogy (1985–1990). The trilogy’s critical and commercial success led to Fox headlining several films throughout the 1980s and 1990s, including Teen Wolf (1985), The Secret of My Success (1987), Casualties of War (1989), and The Frighteners (1996). He returned to television on the ABC sitcom Spin City, where he portrayed the lead role of Mike Flaherty from 1996 to 2000. In 1998, Fox publicly disclosed that he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease seven years earlier. Fox subsequently became an advocate for finding a cure and founded the Michael J. Fox Foundation in 2000 to help fund research. Although the disease’s worsening symptoms forced Fox to have a less active career, he continued to make guest appearances on television, including recurring roles on the FX comedy-drama Rescue Me (2009) and the CBS legal drama The Good Wife (2010–2016) that garnered him critical acclaim. He also worked in voice-over, voicing the title character in the Stuart Little films (1999–2005) and the lead of the animated film Atlantis: The Lost Empire (2001). His final major role was on the NBC sitcom The Michael J. Fox Show (2013–2014). Fox retired from acting in 2020 due to his declining health. During his career, Fox has won five Primetime Emmy Awards, four Golden Globe Awards, two Screen Actors Guild Awards, and a Grammy Award. He was also appointed an Officer of the Order of Canada in 2010, along with being inducted to Canada’s Walk of Fame in 2000 and the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2002. For his work advocating a cure for Parkinson’s disease, he received an honorary doctorate in 2010 from the Karolinska Institute.
Acting career
Early career
Fox’s first feature film roles were Midnight Madness (1980) and Class of 1984 (1982), credited in both as Michael Fox. Shortly afterward, he began playing “Young Republican” Alex P. Keaton in the show Family Ties, which aired on NBC for seven seasons from 1982–89. In an interview with Jimmy Fallon in April 2014, Fox stated he negotiated the role at a payphone at Pioneer Chicken. He received the role only after Matthew Broderick was unavailable. Family Ties had been sold to the television network using the pitch “Hip parents, square kids”, with the parents originally intended to be the main characters. However, the positive reaction to Fox’s performance led to his character becoming the focus of the show following the fourth episode. At its peak, the audience for Family Ties drew one-third of America’s households every week. Fox won three Emmy awards for Family Ties in 1986, 1987, and 1988. He won a Golden Globe Award in 1989. Brandon Tartikoff, one of the show’s producers, felt that Fox was too short in relation to the actors playing his parents, and tried to have him replaced. Tartikoff reportedly said that “this is not the kind of face you’ll ever find on a lunchbox.” After his later successes, Fox presented Tartikoff with a custom-made lunchbox with the inscription “To Brandon: This is for you to put your crow in. Love and Kisses, Michael J.” Tartikoff kept the lunchbox in his office for the rest of his NBC career. When Fox left the television series Spin City in 2000, his final episodes made numerous allusions to Family Ties: Michael Gross (who played Alex’s father Steven) portrays Mike Flaherty’s (Fox’s character’s) therapist, and there is a reference to an off-screen character named “Mallory”. Also, when Flaherty becomes an environmental lobbyist in Washington, D.C., he meets a conservative senator from Ohio named Alex P. Keaton, and in one episode Meredith Baxter played Mike’s mother. As a result of working on Family Ties, as well as his acting in Teen Wolf and Back to the Future, Fox became a teen idol. The VH1 television series The Greatest later named him among their “50 Greatest Teen Idols.”
Early career
Fox’s first feature film roles were Midnight Madness (1980) and Class of 1984 (1982), credited in both as Michael Fox. Shortly afterward, he began playing “Young Republican” Alex P. Keaton in the show Family Ties, which aired on NBC for seven seasons from 1982–89. In an interview with Jimmy Fallon in April 2014, Fox stated he negotiated the role at a payphone at Pioneer Chicken. He received the role only after Matthew Broderick was unavailable. Family Ties had been sold to the television network using the pitch “Hip parents, square kids”, with the parents originally intended to be the main characters. However, the positive reaction to Fox’s performance led to his character becoming the focus of the show following the fourth episode. At its peak, the audience for Family Ties drew one-third of America’s households every week. Fox won three Emmy awards for Family Ties in 1986, 1987, and 1988. He won a Golden Globe Award in 1989. Brandon Tartikoff, one of the show’s producers, felt that Fox was too short in relation to the actors playing his parents, and tried to have him replaced. Tartikoff reportedly said that “this is not the kind of face you’ll ever find on a lunchbox.” After his later successes, Fox presented Tartikoff with a custom-made lunchbox with the inscription “To Brandon: This is for you to put your crow in. Love and Kisses, Michael J.” Tartikoff kept the lunchbox in his office for the rest of his NBC career. When Fox left the television series Spin City in 2000, his final episodes made numerous allusions to Family Ties: Michael Gross (who played Alex’s father Steven) portrays Mike Flaherty’s (Fox’s character’s) therapist, and there is a reference to an off-screen character named “Mallory”. Also, when Flaherty becomes an environmental lobbyist in Washington, D.C., he meets a conservative senator from Ohio named Alex P. Keaton, and in one episode Meredith Baxter played Mike’s mother. As a result of working on Family Ties, as well as his acting in Teen Wolf and Back to the Future, Fox became a teen idol. The VH1 television series The Greatest later named him among their “50 Greatest Teen Idols.”
Film career
In January 1985, Fox was cast to replace Eric Stoltz as Marty McFly, a teenager who is accidentally sent back in time from 1985 to 1955 in Back to the Future. Director Robert Zemeckis originally wanted Fox to play Marty, but Gary David Goldberg the creator of Family Ties, which Fox was working on at the time, refused to allow Zemeckis even to approach Fox as he felt that as Meredith Baxter was on maternity leave at the time, Fox’s character Alex Keaton was needed to carry the show in her absence. Eric Stoltz was cast and was already filming Back to the Future, but Zemeckis felt that Stoltz was not giving the right type of performance for the humor involved. Zemeckis quickly replaced Stoltz with Fox, whose schedule was now more open with the return of Meredith Baxter. He was considered for the role of Mark Kendall in Once Bitten, but it eventually went to Jim Carrey. During filming, Fox rehearsed for Family Ties from 10 a.m to 6 p.m, then rushed to the Back to the Future set where he would rehearse and shoot until 2:30 a.m. This schedule lasted for two full months. Back to the Future was both a commercial and critical success. The film spent 8 consecutive weekends as the number-one grossing movie at the US box office in 1985, and eventually earned a worldwide total of $381.11 million. Variety applauded the performances, opining that Fox and his co-star Christopher Lloyd imbued Marty and Doc Brown’s friendship with a quality reminiscent of King Arthur and Merlin. The film was followed by two successful sequels, Back to the Future Part II (1989) and Back to the Future Part III (1990). During and immediately after the Back to the Future trilogy, Fox starred in Teen Wolf (1985), Light of Day (1987), The Secret of My Success (1987), Bright Lights, Big City (1988), and Casualties of War (1989). In The Secret of My Success, Fox played a recent graduate from Kansas State University who moves to New York City, where he has to deal with the ups and downs of the business world. The film was successful at the box office, grossing $110 million worldwide. Roger Ebert in The Chicago Sun Times wrote; “Fox provides a fairly desperate center for the film. It could not have been much fun for him to follow the movie’s arbitrary shifts of mood, from sitcom to slapstick, from sex farce to boardroom brawls.” In Bright Lights, Big City, Fox played a fact-checker for a New York magazine, who spends his nights partying with alcohol and drugs. The film received mixed reviews, with Hal Hinson in The Washington Post criticizing Fox by claiming that “he was the wrong actor for the job”. Meanwhile, Roger Ebert praised the actor’s performance: “Fox is very good in the central role (he has a long drunken monologue that is the best thing he has ever done in a movie)”. During the shooting of Bright Lights, Big City, Fox co-starred again with Tracy Pollan, his on-screen girlfriend from Family Ties. Fox then starred in Casualties of War, a dark and violent war drama about the Vietnam War, alongside Sean Penn. Casualties of War was not a major box office hit, but Fox, playing a private serving in Vietnam, was praised for his performance. Don Willmott wrote: “Fox, only one year beyond his Family Ties sitcom silliness, rises to the challenges of acting as the film’s moral voice and sharing scenes with the always intimidating Penn.” In 1991, he starred in Doc Hollywood, a romantic comedy about a talented medical doctor who decides to become a plastic surgeon. While moving from Washington, D.C. to Los Angeles, he winds up as a doctor in a small southern town in South Carolina. Michael Caton-Jones, from Time Out, described Fox in the film as “at his frenetic best”. The Hard Way was also released in 1991, with Fox playing an undercover actor learning from police officer James Woods. After being privately diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in 1991 and being cautioned he had “ten good working years left”, Fox hastily signed a three-film contract, appearing in For Love or Money (1993), Life With Mikey (1993), and Greedy (1994). The mid-1990s saw Fox play smaller supporting roles in The American President (1995) and Mars Attacks! (1996). His last major film role was in The Frighteners (1996), directed by Peter Jackson. The Frighteners tells the story of Frank Bannister (Fox), an architect who develops psychic abilities allowing him to see, hear, and communicate with ghosts. After losing his wife, he uses his new abilities by cheating customers out of money for his “ghost hunting” business. However, a mass murderer comes back from Hell, prompting Frank to investigate the supernatural presence. Fox’s performance received critical praise, Kenneth Turan in the Los Angeles Times wrote; “The film’s actors are equally pleasing. Both Fox, in his most successful starring role in some time, and [Trini] Alvarado, who looks rather like Andie MacDowell here, have no difficulty getting into the manic spirit of things.” He voiced the American Bulldog Chance in Disney’s live-action film Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey and its sequel Homeward Bound II: Lost in San Francisco, the titular character in Stuart Little and its two sequels Stuart Little 2 and Stuart Little 3: Call of the Wild, and Milo Thatch in Disney’s animated film Atlantis: The Lost Empire.
In January 1985, Fox was cast to replace Eric Stoltz as Marty McFly, a teenager who is accidentally sent back in time from 1985 to 1955 in Back to the Future. Director Robert Zemeckis originally wanted Fox to play Marty, but Gary David Goldberg the creator of Family Ties, which Fox was working on at the time, refused to allow Zemeckis even to approach Fox as he felt that as Meredith Baxter was on maternity leave at the time, Fox’s character Alex Keaton was needed to carry the show in her absence. Eric Stoltz was cast and was already filming Back to the Future, but Zemeckis felt that Stoltz was not giving the right type of performance for the humor involved. Zemeckis quickly replaced Stoltz with Fox, whose schedule was now more open with the return of Meredith Baxter. He was considered for the role of Mark Kendall in Once Bitten, but it eventually went to Jim Carrey. During filming, Fox rehearsed for Family Ties from 10 a.m to 6 p.m, then rushed to the Back to the Future set where he would rehearse and shoot until 2:30 a.m. This schedule lasted for two full months. Back to the Future was both a commercial and critical success. The film spent 8 consecutive weekends as the number-one grossing movie at the US box office in 1985, and eventually earned a worldwide total of $381.11 million. Variety applauded the performances, opining that Fox and his co-star Christopher Lloyd imbued Marty and Doc Brown’s friendship with a quality reminiscent of King Arthur and Merlin. The film was followed by two successful sequels, Back to the Future Part II (1989) and Back to the Future Part III (1990). During and immediately after the Back to the Future trilogy, Fox starred in Teen Wolf (1985), Light of Day (1987), The Secret of My Success (1987), Bright Lights, Big City (1988), and Casualties of War (1989). In The Secret of My Success, Fox played a recent graduate from Kansas State University who moves to New York City, where he has to deal with the ups and downs of the business world. The film was successful at the box office, grossing $110 million worldwide. Roger Ebert in The Chicago Sun Times wrote; “Fox provides a fairly desperate center for the film. It could not have been much fun for him to follow the movie’s arbitrary shifts of mood, from sitcom to slapstick, from sex farce to boardroom brawls.” In Bright Lights, Big City, Fox played a fact-checker for a New York magazine, who spends his nights partying with alcohol and drugs. The film received mixed reviews, with Hal Hinson in The Washington Post criticizing Fox by claiming that “he was the wrong actor for the job”. Meanwhile, Roger Ebert praised the actor’s performance: “Fox is very good in the central role (he has a long drunken monologue that is the best thing he has ever done in a movie)”. During the shooting of Bright Lights, Big City, Fox co-starred again with Tracy Pollan, his on-screen girlfriend from Family Ties. Fox then starred in Casualties of War, a dark and violent war drama about the Vietnam War, alongside Sean Penn. Casualties of War was not a major box office hit, but Fox, playing a private serving in Vietnam, was praised for his performance. Don Willmott wrote: “Fox, only one year beyond his Family Ties sitcom silliness, rises to the challenges of acting as the film’s moral voice and sharing scenes with the always intimidating Penn.” In 1991, he starred in Doc Hollywood, a romantic comedy about a talented medical doctor who decides to become a plastic surgeon. While moving from Washington, D.C. to Los Angeles, he winds up as a doctor in a small southern town in South Carolina. Michael Caton-Jones, from Time Out, described Fox in the film as “at his frenetic best”. The Hard Way was also released in 1991, with Fox playing an undercover actor learning from police officer James Woods. After being privately diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in 1991 and being cautioned he had “ten good working years left”, Fox hastily signed a three-film contract, appearing in For Love or Money (1993), Life With Mikey (1993), and Greedy (1994). The mid-1990s saw Fox play smaller supporting roles in The American President (1995) and Mars Attacks! (1996). His last major film role was in The Frighteners (1996), directed by Peter Jackson. The Frighteners tells the story of Frank Bannister (Fox), an architect who develops psychic abilities allowing him to see, hear, and communicate with ghosts. After losing his wife, he uses his new abilities by cheating customers out of money for his “ghost hunting” business. However, a mass murderer comes back from Hell, prompting Frank to investigate the supernatural presence. Fox’s performance received critical praise, Kenneth Turan in the Los Angeles Times wrote; “The film’s actors are equally pleasing. Both Fox, in his most successful starring role in some time, and [Trini] Alvarado, who looks rather like Andie MacDowell here, have no difficulty getting into the manic spirit of things.” He voiced the American Bulldog Chance in Disney’s live-action film Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey and its sequel Homeward Bound II: Lost in San Francisco, the titular character in Stuart Little and its two sequels Stuart Little 2 and Stuart Little 3: Call of the Wild, and Milo Thatch in Disney’s animated film Atlantis: The Lost Empire.
Later career
Spin City ran from 1996 to 2002 on American television network ABC. The show was based on a fictional local government running New York City, originally starring Fox as Mike Flaherty, a Fordham Law School graduate serving as the Deputy Mayor of New York. Fox won an Emmy award for Spin City in 2000, three Golden Globe Awards in 1998, 1999, and 2000, and two Screen Actors Guild Awards in 1999 and 2000. During the third season of Spin City, Fox made the announcement to the cast and crew of the show that he had Parkinson’s disease. During the fourth season, he announced his retirement from the show. He announced that he planned to continue to act and would make guest appearances on Spin City (he made three more appearances on the show during the final season). After leaving the show, he was replaced by Charlie Sheen, who portrayed the character Charlie Crawford. In 2004, Fox guest starred in two episodes of the comedy-drama Scrubs as Dr. Kevin Casey, a surgeon with severe obsessive-compulsive disorder. The series was created by Spin City creator Bill Lawrence. In 2006, he appeared in four episodes of Boston Legal as a lung cancer patient. The producers brought him back in a recurring role for season three, beginning with the season premiere. Fox was nominated for an Emmy Award for best guest appearance. In 2009, Fox appeared in five episodes of the television series Rescue Me which earned him an Emmy for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Drama Series. Starting in 2010, Fox played a recurring role in the US drama The Good Wife as crafty attorney Louis Canning and earned Emmy nominations for three consecutive years. In 2011, Fox was featured as himself in the eighth season of the Larry David vehicle, Curb Your Enthusiasm. David’s character (also himself) becomes a temporary resident of the New York City apartment building that Fox resides in and a conflict arises between the two, whereby David believes that Fox is using his condition (Parkinson’s disease) as a manipulative tool. Fox returned in 2017 for a brief appearance, referencing his prior time on the show. On August 20, 2012, NBC announced The Michael J. Fox Show, loosely based on Fox’s life. Fox starred in the show. It was granted a 22-episode commitment from the network and premiered on NBC on September 26, 2013. The show was taken off the air after 15 episodes and was later cancelled. Fox has made several appearances in other media. At the 2010 Winter Olympics closing ceremony in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, he delivered comedy monologues, along with William Shatner and Catherine O’Hara, in the “I am Canadian” part of the show. Despite a sound-alike, A.J. Locascio, voicing his character of Marty McFly in the 2011 Back to the Future episodic adventure game, Fox lent his likeness to the in-game version of Marty alongside Christopher Lloyd. Fox made a special guest appearance in the final episode of the series as an elder version of Marty, as well as his great-grandfather Willie McFly. In 2018, Fox was cast in the recurring role of Ethan West on the second season of the ABC political drama Designated Survivor. Fox appeared in five episodes of the show. His character was described as “a Washington attorney with significant connections and a history of great success”who was hired to investigate whether the president of the United States was fit to continue in his position. Fox’s memoir, No Time Like the Future: An Optimist Considers Mortality, was released in November 2020. In the memoir, Fox stated that he was once again retiring from acting. He noted that “‘not being able to speak reliably is a game-breaker for an actor'” and added that he was experiencing memory loss. Fox wrote: “‘There is a time for everything, and my time of putting in a 12-hour workday, and memorizing seven pages of dialogue, is best behind me … I enter a second retirement. That could change, because everything changes. But if this is the end of my acting career, so be it.'”
Spin City ran from 1996 to 2002 on American television network ABC. The show was based on a fictional local government running New York City, originally starring Fox as Mike Flaherty, a Fordham Law School graduate serving as the Deputy Mayor of New York. Fox won an Emmy award for Spin City in 2000, three Golden Globe Awards in 1998, 1999, and 2000, and two Screen Actors Guild Awards in 1999 and 2000. During the third season of Spin City, Fox made the announcement to the cast and crew of the show that he had Parkinson’s disease. During the fourth season, he announced his retirement from the show. He announced that he planned to continue to act and would make guest appearances on Spin City (he made three more appearances on the show during the final season). After leaving the show, he was replaced by Charlie Sheen, who portrayed the character Charlie Crawford. In 2004, Fox guest starred in two episodes of the comedy-drama Scrubs as Dr. Kevin Casey, a surgeon with severe obsessive-compulsive disorder. The series was created by Spin City creator Bill Lawrence. In 2006, he appeared in four episodes of Boston Legal as a lung cancer patient. The producers brought him back in a recurring role for season three, beginning with the season premiere. Fox was nominated for an Emmy Award for best guest appearance. In 2009, Fox appeared in five episodes of the television series Rescue Me which earned him an Emmy for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Drama Series. Starting in 2010, Fox played a recurring role in the US drama The Good Wife as crafty attorney Louis Canning and earned Emmy nominations for three consecutive years. In 2011, Fox was featured as himself in the eighth season of the Larry David vehicle, Curb Your Enthusiasm. David’s character (also himself) becomes a temporary resident of the New York City apartment building that Fox resides in and a conflict arises between the two, whereby David believes that Fox is using his condition (Parkinson’s disease) as a manipulative tool. Fox returned in 2017 for a brief appearance, referencing his prior time on the show. On August 20, 2012, NBC announced The Michael J. Fox Show, loosely based on Fox’s life. Fox starred in the show. It was granted a 22-episode commitment from the network and premiered on NBC on September 26, 2013. The show was taken off the air after 15 episodes and was later cancelled. Fox has made several appearances in other media. At the 2010 Winter Olympics closing ceremony in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, he delivered comedy monologues, along with William Shatner and Catherine O’Hara, in the “I am Canadian” part of the show. Despite a sound-alike, A.J. Locascio, voicing his character of Marty McFly in the 2011 Back to the Future episodic adventure game, Fox lent his likeness to the in-game version of Marty alongside Christopher Lloyd. Fox made a special guest appearance in the final episode of the series as an elder version of Marty, as well as his great-grandfather Willie McFly. In 2018, Fox was cast in the recurring role of Ethan West on the second season of the ABC political drama Designated Survivor. Fox appeared in five episodes of the show. His character was described as “a Washington attorney with significant connections and a history of great success”who was hired to investigate whether the president of the United States was fit to continue in his position. Fox’s memoir, No Time Like the Future: An Optimist Considers Mortality, was released in November 2020. In the memoir, Fox stated that he was once again retiring from acting. He noted that “‘not being able to speak reliably is a game-breaker for an actor'” and added that he was experiencing memory loss. Fox wrote: “‘There is a time for everything, and my time of putting in a 12-hour workday, and memorizing seven pages of dialogue, is best behind me … I enter a second retirement. That could change, because everything changes. But if this is the end of my acting career, so be it.'”
CHRISTOPHER LLOYD BIOGRAPHY:
Christopher Allen Lloyd (born October 22, 1938) is an American actor. He has appeared in theater productions, films, and television since 1961, and is best known for portraying Dr. Emmett “Doc” Brown in the Back to the Future trilogy (1985–1990) and Jim Ignatowski in the comedy series Taxi (1978–1983), winning two Emmy Awards for the latter. Lloyd came to public attention in Northeastern theater productions during the 1960s and early 1970s, earning Drama Desk and Obie awards for his work, and making his cinematic debut in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975). Lloyd also starred as Commander Kruge in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (1984), Professor Plum in Clue (1985), Judge Doom in Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988), and Uncle Fester in The Addams Family (1991) and its sequel Addams Family Values (1993). Lloyd earned a third Emmy for his 1992 guest appearance in Road to Avonlea, and won an Independent Spirit Award for his performance in Twenty Bucks (1993). He has done extensive voice work, including Merlock in DuckTales the Movie: Treasure of the Lost Lamp (1990), Grigori Rasputin in Anastasia (1997), the Woodsman in the Cartoon Network miniseries Over the Garden Wall (2014), and the Hacker in PBS Kids series Cyberchase (2002–present), which earned him two further Emmy nominations. Lloyd has also been nominated for two Saturn Awards and a BIFA Award.
Career
Lloyd began his career apprenticing at summer theaters in Mount Kisco, New York, and Hyannis, Massachusetts. He took acting classes in New York City at age 19-some at the Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre with Sanford Meisner-and he recalled making his New York theater debut in a 1961 production of Fernando Arrabal’s play And They Put Handcuffs on the Flowers, saying, “I was a replacement and it was my first sort of job in New York.” He made his Broadway debut in the short-lived Red, White and Maddox (1969), and went on to Off-Broadway roles in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Kaspar (February 1973), The Harlot and the Hunted, The Seagull (January 1974), Total Eclipse (February 1974), Macbeth, In the Boom Boom Room, Cracks, Professional Resident Company, What Every Woman Knows, The Father, King Lear, Power Failure and, in mid-1972, appeared in a Jean Cocteau double bill, Orphee and The Human Voice, at the Jean Cocteau Theater at 43 Bond Street. Lloyd returned to Broadway for the musical Happy End. He performed in Andrzej Wajda’s adaptation of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Possessed at Yale Repertory Theater, and in Jay Broad’s premiere of White Pelican at the P.A.F. Playhouse in Huntington Station, New York, on Long Island. In 1977, he said of his training at the Neighborhood Playhouse under Meisner, “My work up to then had been very uneven. I would be good one night, dull the next. Meisner made me aware of how to be consistent in using the best that I have to offer. But I guess nobody can teach you the knack, or whatever it is, that helps you come to life on stage.” His first film role was as a psychiatric patient in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975). He is known for his work as “Reverend” Jim Ignatowski, the ex-hippie cabbie on the sitcom Taxi, for which he won two Primetime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series; and the eccentric inventor Emmett “Doc” Brown in the Back to the Future trilogy for which he was nominated for a Saturn Award. In 1985, he appeared in the pilot episode of Street Hawk. The following year, he played the reviled Professor B.O. Beanes on the television series Amazing Stories. Other roles include Klingon Commander Kruge in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (1984) (on suggestion of fellow actor and friend Leonard Nimoy), Professor Plum in Clue (1985), Professor Dimple in an episode of Road to Avonlea (for which he won a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series),[16] the villain Judge Doom in Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988), Merlock in DuckTales the Movie (1990), Switchblade Sam in Dennis the Menace (1993), Zoltan in Radioland Murders (1994), and Uncle Fester in The Addams Family (1991) and Addams Family Values (1993). Lloyd portrayed the star character in the adventure game Toonstruck, released in November 1996. In 1999, he was reunited onscreen with Michael J. Fox in an episode of Spin City entitled “Back to the Future IV — Judgment Day”, in which Lloyd plays Owen Kingston, the former mentor of Fox’s character, Mike Flaherty, who stopped by City Hall to see Kingston, only to proclaim himself God. That same year, Lloyd starred in the film remake of the 1960s series My Favorite Martian. He starred on the television series Deadly Games in the mid-1990s and was a regular on the sitcom Stacked in the mid-2000s. In 2003, he guest-starred in three of the 13 produced episodes of Tremors: The Series as the character Cletus Poffenburger. In November 2007, Lloyd was reunited onscreen with his former Taxi co-star Judd Hirsch in the season-four episode “Graphic” of the television series Numb3rs as Ross Moore. He then played the role of Ebenezer Scrooge in a 2008 production of A Christmas Carol at the Kodak Theatre with John Goodman and Jane Leeves. In 2009, he appeared in a comedic trailer for a faux horror film version of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory entitled Gobstopper, in which he played Willy Wonka as a horror-film-style villain. In mid-2010, he starred as Willy Loman in a Weston Playhouse production of Death of a Salesman. That September, he reprised his role as Dr. Emmett “Doc” Brown in Back to the Future: The Game, an episodic adventure game series developed by Telltale Games. That same month, the production company 3D Entertainment Films announced Lloyd would star as an eccentric professor who with his lab assistant explore the various dimensions in Time, the Fourth Dimension, an approximately 45-minute Imax 3D film that was planned for release in 2012. On January 21, 2011, he appeared in “The Firefly” episode of the J. J. Abrams television series Fringe as Roscoe Joyce. That August, he reprised the role of Dr. Emmett Brown (from Back to the Future) as part of an advertising campaign for Garbarino, an Argentine appliance company, and also as part of Nike’s “Back For the Future” campaign for the benefit of The Michael J. Fox Foundation. In 2012 and 2013, Lloyd reprised the role of Brown in two episodes of the stopmotion series Robot Chicken. He was a guest star on the 100th episode of the USA Network sitcom Psych as Martin Khan in 2013. In May 2013, Lloyd appeared as the narrator and the character Azdak in the Bertolt Brecht play The Caucasian Chalk Circle, produced by the Classic Stage Company in New York. On the October 21, 2015, episode of Jimmy Kimmel Live, Lloyd and Michael J. Fox appeared in a Back to the Future skit to commemorate the date in the second installment of the film trilogy. In May 2018, Lloyd made a cameo appearance in the episode titled “No Country For Old Women” of Roseanne, where he played the role of Lou, the boyfriend to the mother of Roseanne and Jackie. In late 2019, he provided the voice of Master Xehanort in the “Re Mind” downloadable content of Kingdom Hearts III, taking over the role from the late Leonard Nimoy and Rutger Hauer, and reprised the role in the 2020 video game Kingdom Hearts: Melody of Memory.
