Michael J. Fox almost died on the set of Back to the Future 3 (3 photos + 1 video)

Michael J. Fox became one of the brightest stars of the 1980s, winning three Emmy Awards for his role as Alex P. Keaton on The Family bonds." And the role of Marty McFly in the Back to the Future trilogy secured him status of a legendary Hollywood actor. Despite the fantastic genre, the stunts in the films were quite real. One of them almost cost Fox life.





The third part of the Back to the Future franchise is an ode to the greats Westerns. In it, Emmett "Doc" Brown (Christopher Lloyd) due to a malfunction The DeLorean travels back to 1885. Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) goes to save a friend.

In the first two films, McFly's enemy was Biff Tannen (Thomas F. Wilson), and in the third part Tannen’s great-grandfather acted as the villain, Buford. When McFly travels back in time, he meets Buford and his a gang that attacks the hero. They hang Marty and only appear Doc, who hit the rope with a well-aimed shot, saved the life of the main to the hero.



The scene is very tense, McFly almost loses his life. In reality, Fox himself almost left this world.

In his book "Lucky", published in 2002, the actor talks about how this scene was filmed and how it almost cost him life. Since the filming was close-up, Michael had to perform the stunt yourself, without the help of a stuntman. At first he stood on the box and tried to make it look like he was swinging on a rope.



"No matter how much I shifted my weight, there was no swaying effect realistic, and I suggested trying to do it without a box," Fox wrote in his memoirs. The actor rehearsed several times performing a trick safely by learning to place your hands between the rope and neck to avoid suffocation. "For the next few takes everything went well. Fine. But on the third I was wrong. The noose around the neck blocked the carotid artery, and I lost consciousness for a short time."

At first, the crew didn't realize that Fox wasn't acting: "I rocked unconscious for several seconds while Bob Zemeckis, although he was my fan, didn’t understand that even I couldn’t play like that.”

If Zemeckis had not taken action, the actor could have died, and if he had not died, he could have been seriously injured.



After Michael came to his senses, he thought little about consequences of the experience. However, a year later the actor noticed that his little finger was his left hand twitches uncontrollably. He went to the doctor, and he determined that the most likely cause was some kind of trauma.

“He asked if I had any injuries recently. Since there were so many options, I listed a few like this: say, the most striking, and one case particularly interested him." The doctor decided that there was a connection between uncontrolled movements and incident on the set of Back to the Future 3.

Later he began to develop new symptoms: twitching other fingers, as well as stiffness and pain in the muscles. "Now I was I am convinced that my problem is physiological and not neurological, possibly related to suffocation on the set of “Back to the Future,” he wrote.

After visiting several doctors, Michael received a specific answer. In 1991, 29-year-old Fox was diagnosed with the disease Parkinson's. The actor continued to work in Hollywood and kept his diagnosis at bay. secret until 1998.