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22 April 2013

Back To The Future Part 2

Which way to 1985 - and which 1985 will it be?!

From the Sun, 23/11/1989... 

He has soft, shoulder-length auburn hair. His 5ft 4 in frame is draped in a blue blouse and hot pants.

He is Michael J. Fox, who swaps sex for frocks in his latest movie, "Back To The Future 2". 

The 28-year-old heart-throb returns to British [cinema] screens tomorrow as Marty McFly, the small-town boy from California, who's transported to the year 2015 and then all the way back to the Fifties. 

The topsy-turvy time-warp not only calls on Michael to play his own father. It also demands that he turns into a Foxy Lady, depicting his daughter Marlene as a future shocker.

The part called for Michael to wiggle as he walked. Which is probably why he reddens as he talks about the gender-bender role.

"God, it took me an hour to stop myself blushing in that outfit," he says. "But the general consensus was that I was cute and had great legs."

The technology used on the movie to put all his characters together on one screen meant he was playing them all on the same days.

"At least that way they all stayed fresh in my mind," he says. "It was one thing playing a depressed older man and an insane teenage boy but I had to change gear for Marlene.

"I felt completely ridiculous but I could approach it like a character role, not like a guy just dressed up as a girl."

And this is about the right time to explain the mind-boggling plot. First the young hero travels into the future to save his kids from being thrown into jail. He sees his older self there as well as his girlfriend who has become his wife. 

Then he and his scientific sidekick Doc [Christopher Lloyd] return to 1985 to find their town is now a vision of vigilante hell. 

His father has been killed. His school enemy Biff has married his mother. And Fox and friend realise they have taken a wrong time turn and arrived in a different 1985.

So, quite naturally, he travels back in time to 1955 where he finds the bloke he was in the first "Back To The Future", 1985's top-grossing film...

Meanwhile Fox's own future is assured. There's the heavyweight "Casualties of War" also to be screened in Britain...

He has his own production company and there's his son, six-month-old Sam, the major reason why the baby-faced star has grown up.

"All in all I'm pretty happy, " he says. "Heck I'm even changing nappies." 

Which is probably more pleasant than changing sex.