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Back to the Future <\/em>star Michael J. Fox recounted in his new memoir about the making of the film, Future Boy<\/em>, how his replacing Eric Stoltz six weeks into production led to another recasting.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/li>\n Melora Hardin, who’d already shot a number of scenes as protagonist Marty McFly’s girlfriend Jennifer Parker, was ultimately recast by Claudia Wells after being deemed too tall for Fox.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/li>\n “Bob Zemeckis thought perhaps the audience could look past our height difference, but when he quickly surveyed the female members of the crew, they assured him that the tall pretty girl in high school rarely picks the cute short guy,” Fox wrote.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n Hollywood can be brutal. Sometimes you lose a promising part in an upcoming film because you’re deemed the wrong fit, but you can even lose your part because your scene partner <\/em>is deemed the wrong fit.<\/p>\n Melora Hardin<\/a>, the future star of The Office<\/em>, found herself on the wrong end of such a casting decision after she’d already shot weeks of footage for the 1985 sci-fi comedy classic Back to the Future<\/em><\/a>. Franchise star Michael J. Fox<\/a>\u00a0recounted the series of dominoes that fell, eventually toppling Hardin’s chance at her first big break, in his new memoir of the making of the film, Future Boy<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n “My goal as a child was self-\u00adpreservation. Bullies often ridiculed my height, an easy target. I suffered the indignity of short jokes and prejudice against my smallness,” he wrote. Fox found that his diminutive stature “worked in my favor when I was a teenage actor playing a younger kid, but it turned against me as an adult, when I went up for romantic leads opposite taller actresses.”<\/p>\n That sword proved to be double-edged, however, when Fox replaced Eric Stoltz<\/a> as the lead in Robert Zemeckis and Steven Spielberg’s time-traveling romp six weeks into production. Suddenly, it wasn’t Fox who was too short, but Hardin, cast to play protagonist Marty McFly’s girlfriend Jennifer Parker, who was too tall.<\/p>\n