Christopher Lloyd is one of the all-time greatest character actors, or actors in general. His own particular pantheon of iconic cinematic characters, ranging from the pleasantly bizarre to the disturbingly charming, was produced by his singular combination of charisma and mania. You can’t even picture someone else attempting to play that role after seeing him play characters like Dr. Emmett Brown in Back to the Future, Max Taber in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, or Judge Doom in Who Framed Roger Rabbit.
But it seems like we haven’t seen Christopher Lloyd at all since the mid-1990s. He transitioned from being an A-lister at the height of his career to essentially going away. Don’t worry if you’ve been missing him, though! He wasn’t transported to the Wild West or disintegrated in a plunge. The reasons behind the recent absence of Hollywood’s beloved old lovable loon are several, some of them quite unexpected. Let’s find out what he’s been doing.
The fact that Lloyd has always had a busy personal life with plenty of ups and downs can be partly blamed for the amount of time he hasn’t been working. He has never been married, but he has had a long line of relationships that haven’t always ended pleasantly.
His first union was to Catherine Boyd, whom he married in 1959 and later divorced. We can infer that this was his most notoriously contentious divorce. Boyd even filed a lawsuit against Lloyd in 2002 for allegedly unpaid alimony.
In 1974, Lloyd tied the knot again, this time to actress Kay Tornborg, whom he stayed married to until 1987. Then, in 1988, he wed Carol Ann Vanek; however, they were only wed for a brief period of time, ending in 1991. Shortly after, he married screenwriter Jane Walker Wood, with whom he remained together from 1992 to 2005. This was his fourth marriage.
He made the decision to remain single for the following ten years, but he recently remarried in 2016, this time to Lisa Loiacono, a real estate dealer. Let’s hope that this idea endures.
The truth is that casting Christopher Lloyd was never easy. He has a really particular energy that is ideal for playing some very particular characters. Being in the right location at the right time may have helped him land some of the big jobs early in his career. He might have always been destined to be a character actor of medium caliber.
Lloyd used to play a fairly wide age range, switching between older characters and younger characters from film to picture, to make up for the low demand for eccentric weirdos in large budget movies. For instance, when he was 46 years old, he simultaneously played the considerably younger Professor Plum in Clue and the much older Doc Brown in Back to the Future.
His options are becoming increasingly constrained as he actually approaches old age. He alluded to the challenges of growing older in the aforementioned interview with Metro New York, saying, “I once did a Q&A for Back to the Future, and some little child goes for the microphone and says, “Mr. Lloyd, now that you’re older do you miss putting on old age makeup?” Lloyd laughed loudly. Excellent observation for a young child.
Unfortunately, the fact that Back to the Future is very likely never going to return is one of the reasons we haven’t seen more of Christopher Lloyd. Lloyd isn’t the issue; he still enjoys portraying Doc Brown in supporting roles and ancillary content. In response to a question regarding whether he would take part in a sequel from the Phoenix New Times, he stated, “I would be thrilled. A fourth movie would be amazing for me.”
But the producers are categorically opposed, and there’s also the issue of Michael J. Fox’s health. Despite acting frequently since then and publicly battling Parkinson’s disease since 1998, Fox wouldn’t be able to manage a fresh main role in a Back to the Future movie. Director Robert Zemeckis responded to a question regarding a potential sequel by saying, “Oh my God, never! Until [producer Bob Gale] and I pass away, it cannot happen. It’s like suggesting that Citizen Kane be remade. Who will we cast in the role of Kane? What madness, what nonsense is that?”
Even if the Back to the Future series is over, its spirit lives on in various forms of media. The most popular of these is the wildly popular twisted adult animated sitcom Rick and Morty, whose two main characters were, respectively, modeled by Doc Brown and Marty McFly. Christopher Lloyd reportedly watched it and indicated interest in making a guest appearance on the show, presumably as Rick’s father, in the same New Times interview.
