MovieChat Forums > Back to the Future (1985) Discussion > How come Eric Stoltz never became a bigg...

How come Eric Stoltz never became a bigger star?

posted 4 years ago by TMC-4 (19571)
31 replies | jump to latest

I've often wondered how his career would've turned out had he not been fired from Back to the Future? He has apparently had a reputation of being difficult to work with. What I mean is that he is one of those "method actors", which often offends other actors, directors, and worst, producers who put the “projects” together. Allegedly, when he was working on Back to the Future, he insisted that everybody on set called him "Marty" in-between takes. Thomas F. Wilson (Biff) in particular, apparently didn't get along with him on set.

https://www.quora.com/How-come-Eric-Stoltz-never-became-a-huge-star?q=eric%20stoltz%20bigger%20star

[–] aavfreak (2979) 4 years ago

Tom Cruise did the method acting thing for Top Gun and that seemed to work out well for him.

I don't think it has much to do with that.

[–] Cognoscente (2503) 4 years ago

I agree. Too many writers and fanboys like to put emphasis on Eric's method acting being the problem, but the movie was nearly finished before he was fired. If he was such a nightmare to deal with, he would have been let go much earlier on.

Funny thing is...Eric and Tom got their method gimmick from Sean Penn. Bronson Pinchot had this to say about Tom going all method during the making of Risky Business: "He had spent some formative time with Sean Penn. Tom had picked up this knack of calling everyone by their character names, because that would probably make your performance better, and I don’t agree with that. I think that acting is acting, and the rest of the time, you should be you, but he called us all by our character names."