Back to the Future Characters: The Whole Hill Valley Roster
November 5, 1955. A kid in a down vest walks into a soda shop and the owner asks him if he is a sailor, because the vest looks like a life preserver. Forty years on, the thing that still astonishes about Hill Valley is how many people in it are fully drawn. Nobody in this movie is furniture.
Back to the Future opened July 3, 1985, earned $381.1 million and finished as the highest-grossing film in the world that year. Robert Zemeckis directed it, he and Bob Gale wrote it, and Universal put it back in 2,275 theaters in 2025 for the 40th anniversary, with IMAX showtimes. Here is the whole roster, who played them, and the things even devoted fans tend to forget.
Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox)
The kid who breaks the timeline and then has to repair it. We gave Marty his own page, so this entry stays short: read the full story of Marty McFly there.
What casual fans forget: Fox was the first choice and could not be had. Family Ties creator Gary David Goldberg refused to let Zemeckis even approach him while Meredith Baxter was on maternity leave, so Eric Stoltz was cast and filmed for weeks before Zemeckis concluded it was not working. Fox came in January 1985, and for months he filmed Family Ties by day, went to the Back to the Future set at night, and often did not get home until early the next morning; the teamsters who drove him sometimes had to carry him to bed. The film opened at number one at the American box office, held the spot for its first three weekends, slipped to second for a single week, then took it back and kept it for eight more. In October 2025 Fox published a memoir about all of it called Future Boy.
Dr. Emmett “Doc” Brown (Christopher Lloyd)
The scientist, the friend, and the most quotable man in either decade. Doc builds the DeLorean, funds it with plutonium swindled from Libyan terrorists, needs 1.21 gigawatts to get Marty home, and gets the movie’s best emotional trick: he tears up Marty’s warning letter in 1955 and then, thirty years later, sits up in a bulletproof vest holding the letter pieced back together.
What casual fans forget: almost every big comic actor of the era was considered first. Jeff Goldblum, John Lithgow, Dudley Moore, Robin Williams, John Cleese and Gene Hackman were all in the conversation. Lloyd got the offer and was reluctant to take it until a friend talked him into it. The hair came from Albert Einstein and the conductor Leopold Stokowski, and Lloyd, at 6 feet 1, hunched through the whole picture to bring himself closer to Fox at 5 feet 5. Lloyd was already an established character actor: he made his film debut in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest in 1975 and had won two Emmys as Reverend Jim on Taxi before Doc existed. Afterward came Judge Doom in Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Uncle Fester in The Addams Family, Professor Plum in Clue, and a working career that runs through to Nobody 2 in 2025. Doc’s dog Einstein, by the way, was written as a chimpanzee named Shemp until studio boss Sidney Sheinberg objected that movies with chimps never do well.
Lorraine Baines McFly (Lea Thompson)
The hardest part in the movie, and the one nobody credits. Thompson has to play a defeated, drinking 1985 mother and a 1955 teenager who falls for her own son, and make both of them sympathetic in the same 116 minutes. The whole engine of the plot runs on Lorraine’s infatuation being funny instead of unbearable, and that is an acting problem, not a writing one.
What casual fans forget: she was not even called Lorraine in the drafts. The character was Meg until Sheinberg asked for the change, after his wife, the actress Lorraine Gary. Thompson, born in Rochester, Minnesota in 1961, was already in All the Right Moves and Red Dawn before this. She went on to sing lead in character as Beverly Switzler in Howard the Duck, played Amanda Jones in Some Kind of Wonderful, starred in Caroline in the City from 1995 to 1999, and played Kathryn Kennish on Switched at Birth from 2011 to 2017. She also became a director: two Hallmark features, and episodes of Star Trek: Picard that aired in 2022.
George McFly (Crispin Glover)
The most peculiar performance in a mainstream 80s blockbuster, and the reason the ending lands. George is a man being slowly erased by his own life, and the movie’s real victory is not Marty getting home. It is that laugh, and that punch.
What casual fans forget: Glover, born in New York in 1964 and named after the Saint Crispin’s Day speech in Henry V, built George out of his own mannerisms, lost his voice partway through the shoot and had to dub some lines back in. In his 2025 memoir Fox described the friction of acting opposite him: “I knew Crispin Glover prior to Back to the Future. I wouldn’t, however, say I was prepared to act with him.” Of both Glover and Lloyd, Fox wrote, “Neither he nor Crispin ever did the same thing the same way twice.” George was recast for Part II and Part III. Glover went his own way entirely: Layne in River’s Edge, the first actor to play Andy Warhol in a widely released film, What’s Eating Gilbert Grape, Dead Man, the Thin Man in Charlie’s Angels, Grendel in Beowulf speaking Old English, and Mr. World on American Gods. He has spent the money from the studio pictures funding his own films. And yes, that was him on Letterman on July 28, 1987, in the platform shoes and the wig, nearly kicking the host in the face.
Biff Tannen (Thomas F. Wilson)
The bully, in two eras, with the same haircut and the same manure truck waiting for him. Biff works because Wilson plays him as genuinely dangerous rather than cartoonish, especially in the car outside the dance, which is the one scene in this comedy that stops being funny.
What casual fans forget: Wilson got his first feature starring role because J.J. Cohen, one of the actors in front of him, was judged not intimidating enough standing next to Eric Stoltz. Cohen stayed on as Biff’s crony Skinhead, and Billy Zane, also considered for Biff, ended up as Match. As for the name, Gale and Zemeckis took Tannen from Universal executive Ned Tanen, who had been unpleasant to them. The real Wilson could not be further from Biff: raised in Wayne, Pennsylvania, president of the Radnor High debate team with future New York Times columnist David Brooks as his partner, tuba player, drum major, international politics major, then a stand-up comic sharing an apartment in Los Angeles with Andrew Dice Clay and Yakov Smirnoff. He played Coach Fredricks on Freaks and Geeks, has voiced villains on SpongeBob SquarePants, and got so tired of being asked the same handful of questions about this movie that he wrote “Biff’s Question Song” and put it in his act.
Jennifer Parker (Claudia Wells)
Marty’s girlfriend, and the reason the last scene has any stakes at all. She has very little screen time and she is the person Marty is trying to get back to.
What casual fans forget: Jennifer was cast twice. Melora Hardin had the part on a two-film contract, and when Fox replaced Stoltz the production polled the crew about Hardin being taller than him. Claudia Wells, who had turned the role down earlier over a television commitment, took it instead. Then came the part that gets left out: Wells’s mother was diagnosed with breast cancer, and Wells told the studio she would not be available for the sequels and stepped away from acting. Elisabeth Shue played Jennifer in Part II and Part III. Her mother died in October 1994. Wells came back to the character once, voicing Jennifer for Back to the Future: The Game, 26 years after her last appearance in the series.
Mr. Strickland (James Tolkan)
Hill Valley High’s disciplinarian, the bald head and the pointed finger, and the one word he made his own: slackers. He bullies two generations of McFlys and he is right about neither of them.
What casual fans forget: Tolkan was a serious New York stage actor first. He studied with Stella Adler and Lee Strasberg, understudied Robert Duvall in the original Broadway production of Wait Until Dark and then replaced him, and had been working onscreen since a 1960 episode of Naked City. Zemeckis cast him off his performance in Sidney Lumet’s Prince of the City. He came back as Strickland in Part II and as the character’s ancestor in Part III, and he was Napoleon in Woody Allen’s Love and Death, an FBI agent in WarGames, and Commander Tom “Stinger” Jardian in Top Gun. Tolkan died on Thursday, March 26, 2026, in Saranac Lake, New York, at the age of 94, his death confirmed by a family spokesperson and by Bob Gale. Fans stopped him for decades asking him to berate them as slackers, just for fun.
The rest of Hill Valley
Marty’s siblings, Dave and Linda McFly (Marc McClure and Wendie Jo Sperber), exist mainly to fade out of a photograph, which is one of the most efficient bits of visual storytelling in 80s film. Goldie Wilson (Donald Fullilove) is the cafe owner’s employee in 1955 and the mayor of Hill Valley by 1985. Marvin Berry (Harry Waters Jr.) is Chuck Berry’s cousin, which is either the film’s best joke or its most reckless one, depending on your mood. And the judge nodding along at the Battle of the Bands audition is Huey Lewis himself, who agreed to the cameo only if he went uncredited and in disguise, then supplied the film’s theme song with the News.
Remember when the second hand hit and the cable caught and the whole theater exhaled at once? Nobody in that room was thinking about the plot mechanics. We were watching a kid try to get home.
The honest bottom line
The reason this one outlasted every other blockbuster of its year is that the science fiction is the least interesting thing in it. Strip out the DeLorean and you still have a kid discovering his parents were people before they were disappointments, which is the actual subject and always was. Gale got the idea looking at his own father’s high school yearbook and wondering whether they would have been friends. Forty years, a re-release in 2,275 theaters and three generations of viewers later, that question is still the whole movie.
FAQ
Who are the main Back to the Future characters?
Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox), Dr. Emmett “Doc” Brown (Christopher Lloyd), Lorraine Baines McFly (Lea Thompson), George McFly (Crispin Glover), Biff Tannen (Thomas F. Wilson), Jennifer Parker (Claudia Wells) and Mr. Strickland (James Tolkan).
Who was originally cast as Marty McFly?
Eric Stoltz. He filmed for weeks starting in November 1984 and was replaced on January 10, 1985, after Zemeckis decided the performance was too serious for the comedy. The change cost 34 days of filming and between $3.5 million and $4 million.
Why was Jennifer recast in the sequels?
Claudia Wells stepped away after her mother was diagnosed with breast cancer and told the studio she would not be available. Elisabeth Shue played Jennifer in Part II and Part III.
Is James Tolkan still alive?
No. Tolkan, who played Mr. Strickland, died on Thursday, March 26, 2026, in Saranac Lake, New York, at 94.
Where does the name Biff Tannen come from?
Bob Gale and Robert Zemeckis named him after Universal executive Ned Tanen, who had been unpleasant to them.
How much did Back to the Future make?
$381.1 million worldwide, the highest-grossing film of 1985. Universal re-released it in 2,275 theaters in 2025 for the 40th anniversary.
We watched this one land in real time at fifteen and sixteen, that part is documented. Marty gets the full treatment in our Marty McFly story. From there, take the DeLorean sideways into the best 80s sci-fi movies, or see who else defined the decade in our 80s pop culture icons countdown.