Courtney Gains has revealed that Michael J. Fox barely slept while juggling Back to the Future and Family Ties at the same time. Before Marty McFly became a pop culture fixture, the 1985 Robert Zemeckis film sent a teenager to 1955 in a time-traveling car built by scientist Doc Brown. Christopher Lloyd played the inventor, and the adventure looked effortless on screen. Behind the cameras, someone was paying in sleep.

Movie stardom sounds glamorous until the commute is a limo, the bedroom is its backseat, and the star is Marty McFly.

Michael J. Fox barely slept while filming Back to the Future and Family Ties, according to Courtney Gains. Gains noticed the exhaustion on the school dance scene, as Fox hopped between two sets and napped in the limo. Gains described him as a trooper who worked incredibly hard.

“He took the greatest moment in his life and capitalized,” Gains told People.

He then added, “but he didn’t sleep a lot. I’ll tell you that.”

The pressure began with casting, since Fox replaced Eric Stoltz after the filmmakers decided Stoltz was not the right fit. Gains told People that picking a sitcom actor as a film lead was a bold move because television and film talent rarely crossed over back then. His character Dixon appears in one scene, yet the dance sequence took three days as Robert Zemeckis filmed every possible angle. Gains remains proud to belong to the trilogy.

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Fox once lacked time for sleep, but in April 2026, a network tried to retire him early.

The false alarm arrived in April 2026, when CNN briefly published a tribute package as though Michael J. Fox’s story had ended. The timing was spectacularly bad, since Fox had appeared at PaleyFest LA on April 7 to celebrate Shrinking season 3 and had even hugged co-star Harrison Ford on stage. CNN removed the package across platforms, and a spokesperson told PEOPLE it was published in error, apologizing to Fox and his family.

Fox replied on Threads with a comic multiple-choice list about watching CNN report his own death. The options included switching channels, testing reality with pain, calling his wife, and accepting it as an annual nuisance. He closed by confirming he was completely fine, and his calendar agrees, with Shrinking, voice work in The Magic 7, and the memoir Future Boy. Fox is alive, busy, and still short on sleep.

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What are your thoughts on Michael J. Fox surviving a false obituary and zero sleep? Let us know in the comments.