In Back to the Future, Claudia Wells was recast as Marty McFly’s girlfriend because she was taller than Michael J. Fox. A pair of female executives allegedly “felt that it emasculated their lead character to have a taller girlfriend.”

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Warning: Some entries mention drug and alcohol abuse.

In 2023, she told Late Night with Seth Meyers, "I call them and I’m like, ‘Okay, I’m ready!’ And they were like, ‘Sweetie, you’re good, don’t worry about it.’ They fired me because I wanted to go home for Christmas and be with my family. I watch my Ps and Qs on SVU now. And when they say, ‘We need you,’ I say, ‘I’m there and I’m ready!' So far, so good."

According to the book We Don’t Need Roads: The Making of the Back to the Future Trilogy, Eric reportedly took the news pretty hard.

Ahead of the announcement, some cast and crew members allegedly felt that something was "off" on set.

Cinematographer Dean Cundey said, "There were signs, especially the last week or so. When we would set up a shot and we would shoot Chris Lloyd's angle, but we wouldn't do the reverse on Marty. I'd say, 'Don’t we need the angle?' and Bob would say, 'No, no, no, let's not worry about that.' It didn’t take long for me to see that we were saving our energy for what would come next."

She said, "There’s no doubt it was very painful...I feel like it’s an interesting sign of the times that it was the female executives that felt like they had to be protecting the masculinity of their lead character that way."

During a 2006 fan Q&A, Sylvester said, "He would strut around in his oversized motorcycle jacket like he was the baddest knight at the round table. One day, during an improv, he grabbed me (we were simulating a fight scene) and got a little carried away. I told him in a gentle fashion to lighten up, but he was completely in character and impossible to deal with. 

Then we were rehearsing at Coney Island and it was lunchtime, so we decided to take a break, and the only place that was warm was in the backseat of a Toyota. I was eating a hotdog, and he climbs in with a half a chicken covered in mustard with grease nearly dripping out of the aluminum wrapper. I said, 'That thing is going to drip all over the place.' He said, 'Don't worry about it.' I said, 'If it gets on my pants, you're gonna know about it.' He proceeds to bite into the chicken and a small, greasy river of mustard lands on my thigh. I elbowed him in the side of the head and basically pushed him out of the car. 

The director had to make a choice: one of us had to go, one of us had to stay. Richard was given his walking papers and, to this day, seriously dislikes me. He even thinks I'm the individual responsible for the gerbil rumor. Not true, but that's the rumor."

Dennis told the Sabotage Times, "I was on the set for, like, two days, and got fired... Scott Rudin, the producer, had made an agreement with the director [Peter Weir] that…he didn't want me to do the part, and if he didn't like what I did after the first day's dailies, then he would fire me. And they fired me."

In 2010, he told the Hollywood Reporter, "We didn’t talk very much during the preproduction process, which was the problem. It was a huge movie, and there’s so many things to deal with, and [director Peter Jackson] couldn’t deal with the actors individually. I just showed up on set, and I had gotten it wrong."

Twenty years later, Connor set out to investigate why Tom really fired him with his podcast Dead Eyes.

Appearing on Dead Eyes in 2022, Tom said, "Let me first take full responsibility for doing this to you. This was without a doubt the act of the director, and that was me... [It was] one of those very, very subtle sort of decisions that aims the story in the direction you want it to go."

However, Sean later alleged that she was fired from the role because she rejected lead actor Warren Beatty's advances. He denied this and held that firing her was a creative decision.

He told Vulture, "I think, unfortunately, it's pretty normal in terms of my not-quite-painless-for-everyone-involved 'process' of discovering what the movie is. Samantha was with us on set and was amazing... I love Samantha. I've been friends with her forever, and I hope we make lots of things together in the future."

At the 2009 event Marc Huestis Presents SPARKLE, PATTY, SPARKLE, her ex-costar Patty Duke said, "[Judy] was charming and funny — oh, very funny — but she was having a problem with alcohol, and I don't know about other things. So the director, who was the meanest son of a bitch I ever met in my life...he kept [Judy] waiting and waiting. She had to come in at 6:30 in the morning, and he wouldn't even plan to get to her until four in the afternoon. She was very down to earth, so she didn't mind waiting. What I minded was that there were gentlemen around her who supplied her with wine and other things, so when she finally did get called to the set, she couldn't function very well...and she crumbled."

After being fired, Judy allegedly took all of her costumes from the set. She reportedly later wore one for a performance at the Palace Theater.

In the book, the director said, "I could see [Harvey] was very uncomfortable about conditions in the jungle. And I thought, Not only do I think he's wrong casting, but what's it going to be like for six months in these difficult conditions in the jungle for a city guy who's afraid of it? I just decided to make this tough decision."

Martin Sheen was actually the director's original second choice for the role, after Steve McQueen, but he initially turned it down because he wasn't available.

She later told the Daily Beast, "It was the most uncool day in Hollywood for me. I just treat people the way I want to be treated, so I’d rather not gossip about [Joel's] unkindness."

He said, "My head was in the neck. My hands were in the forearms, and there were cables [attached to my fingers to move the creature's head and jaws]. My feet were in his calves, so I was on [stilts]. It was a disgusting outfit... When Joel asked me to jump, I knew it was gonna be a bad one. I said, 'This is impossible, Joel. I think we're gonna have a problem.'"

However, some crew members denied this version of events. First AD Beau Marks said, "We shot some [footage with the original suit], sent it back to the studio, and the decision came back that we were to shoot everything we could without the creature in the suit, and we were to go back and redesign [the creature]. And when we went back to redesign it, we went to Stan Winston. And Stan decided that the way to do the suit is to start with the tallest, biggest guy he could find, not someone who was the agile mover that Van Damme was."

However, an injury he sustained outside of filming was likely another contributing factor. While out for a nighttime jog, he reportedly tripped, scratching up his face.

On The Movies That Made Us, James said that he regretted "screwing over so many people," namely Alien screenwriter Walter Hill, because of his struggles with addiction.

However, there was another likely contributing factor to his firing. On the Aliens set, James reportedly found a prop gun and fired it into theThe Little Shop of Horrors set next door. There were no injuries, but he left a hole in the wall of the other set.

Kel told Vulture, "Some directors I've worked with — who very few people would say are better directors than Paul — just had a way of making me feel comfortable. For some reason, even though every other actor I know had a relationship with Paul that was super positive and where they did their best work, that just didn't happen with me. I would attribute that primarily to a failure on my side: An actor should, with every ounce of their humanity, be attempting to give the director what he or she wants. And I recall going in and out on whether I could really do that."

Additionally, Lucas Neff was replaced by Raymond Ochoa as Arlo. Neil Patrick Harris, Judy Greer, and Bill Hader's roles as Arlo's siblings were reduced to one role, which went to Marcus Scribner. However, another sibling role later went to Maleah Padilla.

Director Mark Dindal told Collider, "I remember being told, 'Girls will go see a movie with a boy protagonist, but boys won't see a movie with a girl protagonist.' That was the wisdom at the time, until Frozen comes out and makes $1 billion."

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