Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, May 25, 1990 TAG: 9005250348
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: E-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LAURIE HALPERN SMITH NEW YORK TIMES NEWS SERVICE
DATELINE: LOS ANGELES LENGTH: Long
During that time he has become one of the busiest actors in Hollywood, with more than 20 movies and a hit television series under his belt.
So perhaps director Robert Zemeckis couldn't be blamed for being surprised when, during the filming of "Back to the Future Part III," Lloyd took him aside just before a love scene involving Doc Brown and Clara Clayton (Mary Steenburgen) and confided, "This is the first time in my career I've ever kissed a girl on screen."
Lloyd has no ready explanation for this gap in his cinematic education, but it's not hard to figure out: the actor, 48, has tended to play offbeat (if not downright crazy) people, the kind that don't often get the big on-screen clinches.
"I did have a sort of romance in `Star Trek III,' but this is the first humanly possible relationship I've had in a movie," says Lloyd, who has just flown in from his ranch in Montana to do something else he hasn't done in 15 years, something that appears to make him a great deal more uncomfortable than a little celluloid smooching: submitting to an interview.
Lloyd's willingness to talk to the press this one time is a testament to his appreciation for the hugely successful "Back to the Future" films, which have turned him from a revered but unknown character actor to an above-the-title star.
"I'm not famous," he demurs. "Frank Sinatra is famous. But people do stop me on the street and recognize me now."
Even with all that exposure in "Back to the Future," it would take a pretty sharp-eyed fan to spot Lloyd in his civvies.
With his close-cropped hair and gold-rimmed spectacles, he in no way resembles the white-maned Doc Brown.
The only thing that gives him away is his slightly hoarse growl of a voice.
Although it's unlikely that Universal Pictures will herald Lloyd's romantic breakthrough with a "Garbo talks" type of fanfare, the love story of Doc Brown and the schoolmarm, Clara Clayton, does provide a fresh angle for the promotion of the third "Back to the Future" installment, much of which takes place in the Old West of 1885.
Lloyd is probably not going to challenge Kevin Costner or Mel Gibson in the romantic leading man sweepstakes, but Zemeckis and the screenwriter, Bob Gale, say they are thrilled that the affair of the heart they devised for the eccentric inventor has worked so well.
"Chris really works as a romantic leading man," Gale says earnestly.
"That's not always the case, even with the best actors. No matter how great De Niro is, you just don't buy him as a romantic leading man. Chris you do."
"In doing Part 1," Zemeckis recalls, "we talked about Doc's relationship with women. We came up with this scenario to account for his apparent lack of interest in the opposite sex, in which his first sweetheart makes him choose between science and her - and he chose science.
"We wrote the scene, and we were going to put it in Part 2, but we didn't fit it in.
"I think it's amazing that as eccentric as he is in Parts 1 and 2, he evolves to the point where he can fall in love. But that's what Part 3 is. It's about the growth of the characters.
"In a way, he and Marty McFly" - played by Michael J. Fox - "exchange roles. Marty becomes a man, and Doc Brown becomes a boy - he gets in touch with that boyish, romantic, innocent part of himself."
"Boyish, romantic and innocent" are not qualities one would generally associate with the characters assayed by Lloyd.
"Demented, deranged and weird" are more like it.
Ever since his first role as Taber, the mental patient who sets his pants afire in "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," his specialty has been exploring the behavioral fringes.
In the long-running television series "Taxi" he played Rev. Jim, a man transformed by a single joint of marijuana from a straight arrow to a memorably spacey cabby.
He's a Klingon villain in "Star Trek III," a prisoner in "Midnight Express," a comically obsessive mental patient in "The Dream Team," the oddball Professor Plum in "Clue," a gambling palooka in "Eight Men Out," an infantile doctor who is spanked (but not kissed) by his mistress in Nicolas Roeg's "Track 29" and the evil Judge Doom in Zemeckis's "Who Framed Roger Rabbit."
Considering that gallery, one would have to conclude that Emmett Brown is easily the most accessible and lovable character Lloyd has played.
According to the screenwriter, Gale, children particularly adore Doc Brown.
"Our sound man brought his 6-year-old daughter to the set one day, and we thought she'd ask to see Michael, but she only wanted to see Chris. Maybe it's his hair."
Lloyd, who grew up in Stamford, Conn., says his career path was influenced by an older brother, who is an actor.
Also, Lloyd says, "I didn't seem to have a knack for anything else."
But the praise that fellow actors heap on him is lavish even for actors.
"My relationship with him as an actor parallels the one that Marty has with Doc Brown," said Michael J. Fox.
"He's so brilliant, you just enjoy going along for the ride. You never know what Chris is going to do. He could soak himself in kerosene, set himself on fire, and you'd go, `Hmmm, that's a choice.'
"If he didn't shock and surprise me in every second take at least, that would shock and surprise me."
Lloyd, as those who work with him will testify, is a phenomenally shy man when he's not before the cameras.
"I know him less than I know any other actor," says Fox. "He's very enigmatic."
Zemeckis adds, "It's difficult to get him to open up. When I first met him, to interview him for the part of Doc Brown, I had to rely solely on my instincts and, of course, on his work that I'd seen, because all he did in answer to my questions was shrug and say, `I don't know.' "
Lloyd and his wife have lived in Montana for a number of years.
"It reminds me of when I was growing up in New England in the 40s and 50s, the space, the wilderness. It's amazing. I shouldn't be advertising it," he says with a smile.
by CNB