Michael J. Fox--Boy Next Door Ready for Some New Risks

TV luminary, movie star, comedian, dramatic actor, Pepsi pitchman, teen idol, Hollywood mogul, impulsive boy wonder, savvy and thoughtful adult. Michael J. Fox, now 26, wears all those labels like a charmed coat of many colors.

And though some may envy his success (he earned a reported $17 million last year and drives around in a black Ferrari), his adorable good looks (even Fox blushes when teased that every mother in America would like to marry him off to her eldest daughter) and the dream-come-true potential of his days to come (Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Entertainment has signed him to direct his first feature film), it seems a safe bet that Fox’s colorful coat, his colorful life, are in no immediate danger of unraveling or even becoming a little bit frayed around the edges.

James Bridges, director of Fox’s new movie, “Bright Lights, Big City,” which opens Friday, says Fox is the consummate professional and “nice guy,” who was always ready and eager to help the crew move equipment on the set.

And Gary David Goldberg, creator and executive producer of the 6-year-old TV hit “Family Ties,” and the man who--professionally at least--knows Fox best, predicts he could easily turn out to be another Dustin Hoffman--an actor who accepts challenges and offers his fans a string of performances that are always fresh and surprising.

Still, Fox, all 5-foot-4 and 120 pounds of him, stands at a crossroads. Lounging around the newly redecorated offices of his own production company on the Paramount lot, sporting a baggy blue suit, hand-painted T-shirt and an extra-short haircut in honor of his starring role alongside Sean Penn in Brian De Palma’s new film, “Casualties of War,” Fox insisted that his charmed career has been mostly a product of willy-nilly happenstance.

But with the opening Friday of “Bright Lights, Big City”--in which he stars for the first time in a dramatic and frequently ugly role--and with the end of “Family Ties” now clearly in sight, Fox says he’s assessing his life, his image and his future.

“The last week of shooting (this season) on ‘Family Ties,’ ” Fox said, between puffs on what he calls “wimpy” cigarettes, “was a perfect example symbolically. Whenever I got a break, I would come over here to the office to do some business. And I’d be here on the phone on a conference call or something, and then I’d jump up, slide down the banister, hop on my bicycle and ride across the lot to the set as fast as I could. It’s a weird man-child thing, but I guess I always wanted a life like that. I always wanted to be the kind of person that could juxtapose responsibility and playfulness and pull it off.”

The image of Michael J. Fox--or his arrogant, manipulative, laugh-a-minute TV character, Alex P. Keaton--tearing across a movie lot or a college campus on a bicycle is the kind of thing America expects from its resident boy-next-door. But if his recent choice of film roles is any indication, Fox is ready to leave Alex behind--ready to become an adult, an Actor, in the minds of his millions of fans.

Roger Ebert, film critic for the Chicago Sun Times, has reported that Fox’s appearance on the cover of Esquire magazine to illustrate a story on the death of the yuppie was a conscious attempt on the part of United Artists to reposition him as an adult for his upcoming movie roles.

In one particularly ironic scene from the new film, a drunken old writer played by Jason Robards tells Fox’s character, Jamie Conway, a failing, self-destructive aspiring novelist, that he should get himself an MBA so he’ll have something current to write about.

“Money is the new poetry,” Robards--in a line seemingly stolen from Fox’s money-loving television alter ego--mumbles over his martini.

“I just can’t believe that,” Fox’s character in the movie replies.

In many ways, Conway in “Bright Lights, Big City” is the antithesis of Michael J. Fox and the characters that he has played so far--in “Teen Wolf,” “Back to the Future,” “The Secret of My Success” and “Light of Day.” He spends much of the movie in nightclub toilet stalls snorting cocaine and otherwise behaving like a jerk.

On the surface, at least, the film would seem to be not only an artistic risk for a young actor whose other film roles were mostly variations on his television persona, but a risk as well that he might alienate devotees of the Michael J. Fox boy-next-door mystique.

“I can’t worry about that,” Fox said. “What an actor wants to do is be a mirror for society, and if I’m not allowed to do that because I’m removed from certain parts of society in people’s eyes, then I’m being denied the privilege of my job. I’ve done Alex Keaton for 6 years and I’m going to do him for one more season. And now he’s in syndication and if you like him, you can see him and enjoy him. He’s going to be around forever.

“But I also have to challenge that perception of me. That squeaky-clean thing is not something I’ve consciously planned. If it’s who I am, it’s who I am. But the responsible thing for me to do creatively is take that image and put it in a situation that people might resist, in a character that people might not like. Let’s see if I can use my accessibility to make this otherwise inaccessible character accessible to you. If I have to risk something to do that, what the hell, I have to do that.”

“The very fact that Fox is so endearing was something that everybody felt was needed,” says Jay McInerney, who wrote the screenplay for “Bright Lights, Big City” from his own best-selling novel and who initially thought Fox had been miscast. “It is crucial to have someone who is likable, who reaches out through the lens. Michael is one guy who can really do that.”

Most of the reviews for the film have not yet hit the streets, but there are indications that--like “Less Than Zero,” which was also based on a hip, best-selling novel--”Bright Lights, Big City” will not sit well with many film critics. (Newsweek’s David Ansen has already dismissed it as an unimportant film.) Commercially, the success of the film may end up resting entirely on the marquee value of its star.

But the prospect of either a critical or a commercial failure doesn’t concern Fox. “Secret of My Success” was panned, but scored big at the box office, and “Light of Day” bombed both critically and commercially.

Nonetheless, movie scripts, clever Pepsi commercials and opportunities to direct keep rolling Fox’s way.

“When this movie opens, I’m going to be in Thailand shooting ‘Casualties of War,’ ” Fox said. “I’m not going to be in a jungle up to my neck in malarial water with Sean Penn and suddenly start crying, ‘Oh no, (Newsweek’s) Jack Kroll hated me.’ And I’m not going to whine, ‘Oh no, the film only did $2 million this weekend. I’m getting out of the water. I’m going home.’ No. You stay and do your work, and if somebody decides to pull the plug, they pull the plug.”

Whatever the final commercial or critical tally on “Bright Lights, Big City,” people who have hired Fox in the past say his star is only beginning to shine. Despite his cutesy teen-idol image, or maybe because of it, his cloak of many colors, opinion suggests, may truly be coated with Teflon.

“He’s a real movie star,” says Herbert Ross, who directed Fox in “The Secret of My Success.” “He’s willing to take risks and whatever he’s doing to stretch and deepen his work as an actor will enhance his work when he goes back to light comedy as well. I think he’s smart not to be pigeonholed.”

“He has a great deal of sex appeal,” says Bridges. “All major stars do, and there really is something very powerfully sexual about him. And there’s a goodness that comes through, a certain glow. The camera just loves him and he loves and understands it perfectly. I’d work with him again in a minute.”

“He’s so good that you hesitate to discuss it because people just won’t believe it,” Goldberg says. “He has a gift, the talent to do anything he wants. He may have a few rough spots trying to convince the audience to let him get past his ‘Family Ties’ image. But I think the sheer force of his talent will carry him right through. He continually makes moments out of nothing, and there’s no question that he makes everyone around him better.”

Fox and Goldberg are committed to one more season of “Family Ties” before they both throw in the towel for good. Even now, Fox concedes, it’s sometimes a struggle to find challenges within the framework of the show and the character he’s portrayed for 150 episodes.

“There are these questions that are nagging us,” said Fox, who has won two Emmys for his work on the series. “Why is Alex still in that house? Why do I care if Mallory (Justine Bateman) is on the phone? It’s getting a little bit like sparring on a muggy day, getting a little bit harder to lift the arms up one more time.”

But, unquestionably, “Family Ties” has been the best thing that ever happened to him. It made him rich, made him famous, gave him what he calls “the best character that I ever had” and introduced him to his current love, Tracy Pollan, who played Fox’s TV girlfriend for a few seasons and stars with him in “Bright Lights, Big City.” Even after the mega-success of “Back to the Future,” when everyone around him thought he should forgo television to pursue his burgeoning film career, Fox says he never thought about leaving the show.

“Work is work,” Fox said, “and the more you do, the better you get. As my father would say, if you set a full plate in front of yourself, make sure you eat it neatly, quickly and completely. And then you belch.”

Between burps over the next several years, Fox plans to direct a film for Amblin (though “they will bludgeon me to death with an E.T. doll if I reveal any corporate secrets about the project”) and to take on both comedic and serious movie roles. He also hopes to produce a prime-time situation comedy under the banner of his Snowback Productions, and he has bigger hopes of someday taking a few days off to relax and, perhaps, to get married.

But even with the movie-mogul office, the Ferrari, the Emmys and his seemingly infinite possibilities, there’s a certain pinch-me-I-must-be-dreaming sense of wonder and self-doubt that swirls around his boyish face when he talks about his future.

In the same “Bright Lights” scene where he disavowed the supremacy of money, Fox’s character turns to Robards’ character to ask about his own fledgling attempts at writing: “Do you think I’m good?”

“And,” said the man-child actor, “all I could think about was me, Michael J. Fox, leaning over to Jason Robards and saying, ‘Do you think I’m any good?’

“The moment lived, I can tell you that. All the anxiety, my own anxiety, was right there in that line.”