Michael J Fox left Whoopi Goldberg with the clap of thunder this Thursday by revealing he turned down a role in her 1990 hit Ghost.
The film starred Patrick Swayze and Demi Moore as a couple named Sam and Molly whose romance falls apart when he is killed as part of a criminal plot.
Lodging on Earth as a ghost, Sam tries to protect Molly from the miscreants with the help of a mock psychic played by Whoopi, who won an Oscar for the role.
During a performance on The view this week, Michael, 61, who was born nearly a decade later than Patrick, revealed he had been approached for the photo.
“There was an opportunity to work with you that I missed,” he told Whoopi, spilling that when the idea for Ghost was brought to him, he said, “It’s never going to work.”
Sincerity: Michael J. Fox left Whoopi Goldberg this Thursday over the revelation that he turned down a role in her 1990 movie Ghost
Oops: “There was an opportunity to work with you that I missed,” he told Whoopi, spilling that when the idea for Ghost was brought to him, he said, “It’ll never work”
Michael, who became a major movie star in the 1980s, warmly added that Ghost was “great and huge – and I’m an idiot!”
During an extensive interview that ran in Variety last week, Michael explained that he rejected the idea of starring in Ghost because he “didn’t see how it would work.”
Ghost defied his doubts and turned out to be a huge success, becoming the highest-grossing film of a year starring Pretty Woman and Home Alone among others.
At that point, Michael had established himself as a top name in Hollywood, first on TV with Family Ties and then on the big screen with Back To The Future.
He made his own foray into the ghost movie genre with the 1996 film The Frighteners directed by Peter Jackson before his fame with The Lord Of The Rings.
Michael appeared on The View this week to promote his new Apple TV documentary Still, which follows his battle with Parkinson’s.
Directed by Bill Guggenheim, whose work includes documentaries on Bill Gates and Malala Yousafzai, Still was released last Friday.
Michael calls Parkinson’s “the gift that just keeps taking,” and there’s something about that. Because you get clarity when you have such a horrible chronic diagnosis,” Bill noted in his star’s Variety profile last week.
Star-crossed lovers: The film starred Patrick Swayze and Demi Moore as a couple named Sam and Molly whose romance falls apart when he is murdered as part of a criminal plot
Triumph: Sam lingers on Earth as a ghost and tries to protect Molly from the miscreants with the help of a mock psychic played by Whoopi, who won an Oscar for the role
Runaway success: Ghost defied initial expectations and turned out to be a huge success, becoming the highest-grossing film of a year starring Pretty Woman and Home Alone among others
“There’s a kind of relentless degradation that comes with Parkinson’s. But the amazing thing about Michael is that all those falls and all those trips to the hospital could have made him bitter. But strangely enough it has only made him more self-confident and open-hearted,’ the filmmaker marveled.
Meanwhile, Whoopi is currently recovering from a scandalous phase in her career, due to her crazy comments about the Holocaust.
In early 2022, she caused a storm in the media after bizarrely claiming that the Holocaust was not about “race,” but “these are two white groups of people!”
The Holocaust was based on Nazi theories of racial science that classified certain groups, including Jews, as “untermenschen”—”subhumans.”
She faced an international deluge of backlash and was suspended for two weeks for her long-running hosting gig on The View.
In the initial wave of backlash, Whoopi apologized, saying she was “corrected” and “sorry for the pain I caused.”
However, she quickly made a U-turn, discussing the Holocaust with Stephen Colbert on his nightly talk show, declaring, “You can’t call this racism.”
Whoopi sparked another round of backlash in December when she told the story London Times that the holocaust was “not originally” about race, since its first victims were “people they considered mentally retarded.”
Stardom: Michael had established himself as a big name in Hollywood at the time, first on TV with Family Ties and then on the big screen with Back To The Future (pictured)
Details: He made his own foray into the ghost movie genre with the 1996 film The Frighteners (pictured), directed by Peter Jackson before his rise to fame with The Lord Of The Rings.
She further noted that ‘you couldn’t say it to a Jew on the street. You could find me. You couldn’t find them. That was the point I was making.’
Faced with another wave of controversy, Whoopi claimed, “It was never my intention to give the impression that I was doubling down on hurtful comments.”
The Sister Act star was originally named Caryn Johnson but took on Whoopi Goldberg as her stage name and has insisted she has Jewish ancestry.
Meanwhile, historian Henry Louis Gates Jr., who has hosted ancestral-themed TV shows like African American Lives and Finding Your Roots, dug into Whoopi’s family history and couldn’t find any Jewish relatives.
Some reports claim that she took the surname Goldberg because her mother told her she could improve her chances in Hollywood by appearing Jewish.
