Michael J. Fox on What Made 1980s Actors Better Than Modern Stars
Some actors become forever associated with a particular era. While he starred in some interesting movies in the 1990s and 2000s, Michael J. Fox was a quintessential 1980s star. He’s so quintessentially 1980s that he believes acting has gone downhill since then.
Michael J. Fox reacted to being called ’80s famous’
Fox owned the 1980s. Between Back to the Future, Family Ties, The Secret of My Success, and Teen Wolf, he gave kids and teens of that era a lot of nostalgia fuel. If anybody knows what it was like to be a celebrity during that time, it was Michael Jackson. Or Madonna. Or Prince. But Fox is up there. When the 1980s were up, Fox appeared in cult classics like The Frighteners and Atlantis: The Lost Empire, but he absolutely peaked during the Reagan years.
During a 2024 interview with People, Fox said a comment at the Oscars stuck with him. “There’s an expression I referred to when they gave me an Honorary Academy Award — somebody said to me the day before, they were talking about getting this award and being famous and they said ‘You’re ’80s famous,'” Fox said. “I thought, ‘Wow, that’s cool. ’80s famous.’ Right, we were different.”
The ‘Back to the Future’ star said that 1980s actors cared more about acting
What exactly made 1980s actors different? “We were tougher,” the Back to the Future star opined. “We didn’t have social media, we didn’t have any of that crap. We were just famous. Left to our own resources. And it was an amazing time.”
The Teen Wolf star seemed to imply that modern acting has become shallow. “We used to bust our a**, our acting muscles and watch other actors and sit around with other actors and talk about acting and talk about it,” he added. “And now you’ve got people who just go like, ‘Who’s your sweater? What’s your sweater you’re wearing? And what’s that dance step?’ And you’re the most famous person in the world.”
Michael J. Fox’s comments are bizarre
Fox’s comments might be a bit jarring to younger readers. He seems to imply that modern actors don’t care about their profession as much as they care about fashion. Has there ever been a point where movie stars weren’t interested in fashion? The Daily Beast reports that, in 1986, Cher showed up to the Oscars dressed as a showgirl. Maybe Fox was out of town that night.
In addition, he implies social media has made modern actors softer than their 1980s counterparts. That claim is impossible to falsify. While social media has given many actors new avenues for fame and networking, it also opens them up to criticism and attacks that were less common when Back to the Future came out. Social media is, at best, a double-edged sword for modern actors or anyone who wants to build a following.
Maybe Fox is just viewing the past through rose-colored glasses. Or maybe he just doesn’t understand the impact of social media. Either way, there are many modern thespians who care deeply about their performances and aren’t as interested in the latest designs from Balmain.
Fox was one of the kings of 1980s pop culture even if he doesn’t have a handle on the 2020s.
