10 Movie Characters Who Were Perfectly Cast (The Second Time)

4. Marty McFly - Michael J Fox (Back To The Future)

The Original

There are a handful of actors who are probably more known for the roles they lost than the ones they actually completed. Stuart Townsend, for instance, was Aragorn in Lord Of The Rings until he was sacked and replaced and Eric Stoltz had a career-defining role in Back To The Future right up until the point he was fired too.

This wasn't a mere case of a near-miss either, because Stoltz actually filmed a good portion of the movie. It's just that after four weeks, director Robert Zemeckis decided he'd been miscast because he simply wasn't funny enough.

Second Time's The Charm...

After making the presumably difficult decision to fire Stoltz and throw away the footage he'd already filmed (well, until the DVD extras, anyway), Zemeckis turned back to first choice Michael J Fox, who had to initially turn the role down because he was too busy. And despite the exhausting duel filming schedule he was forced to take on (which came at the cost of sleep), his energetic, often frenetic performance as Marty was as definitive as Christopher Lloyd's as Doc Brown.