Melora Hardin on her 'Back to the Future' firing: 'It was a huge disappointment'

Los Angeles: Melora Hardin finally spoke up about being dismissed from the role of Michael J Fox’s romantic lead in the ‘Back to the Future’ for being taller than him.

“‘Back to the Future’ was a huge disappointment. I was 17, you know. I burst into tears. It was very sad. There were quite a few of those that I remember, you know, things that never really got made. But that I remember being very tough,” Hardin told ‘Entertainment Weekly’.

Fox recently talked about how Hardin lost the role after he replaced leading man Eric Stoltz as the time-travelling teen Marty McFly in the 1985 sci-fi classic. Claudia Wells played Jennifer Parker opposite Michael J. Fox in the first movie, directed by Robert Zemeckis.

In his recent memoir ‘Future Boy’, Fox explained that when he replaced Stoltz, some felt co-star Hardin was suddenly too tall to play the character’s girlfriend in the franchise’s first instalment.

The actor recalled that his height ‘worked in my favour when I was a teenage actor playing a younger kid’, but being short ‘turned against me as an adult, when I went up for romantic leads opposite taller actresses’.

“I regret that this prejudice inadvertently affected another cast member in ‘Back to the Future’ - Melora Hardin, the talented actress who had played Marty’s girlfriend, Jennifer, opposite the perfectly tall Eric Stoltz. Melora, several inches taller than me, was replaced in the movie after I took over as Marty. Initially, Bob Zemeckis thought perhaps the audience could look past our height difference, but when he quickly surveyed the female members of the crew, they assured him that the tall, pretty girl in high school rarely picks the cute, short guy. No one asked for my opinion, but I would have risen to Melora’s defence,” added Fox.