Christopher Lloyd still has one lingering regret about his experience filming Back to the Future Part III.
The 88-year-old actor revealed in his new memoir In My Own Time that although the third installment of the classic sci-fi series is his favorite, there is a particular stunt in the 1990 movie that that he regrets skipping.
Lloyd recalled lots of horseback riding for the sequel as his character, Emmett “Doc” Brown, used his time machine, the DeLorean, to visit old Western times with Michael J. Fox’s character Marty McFly. However, he confessed in his memoir that the majority of the wild action scenes were done by stuntmen.
“There’s a sequence in Part III where Doc is riding on horseback and chasing after the speeding steam-engine train that he hopes will once again bring Marty and the DeLorean back to the present day,” Lloyd wrote in his memoir released Tuesday, according to Entertainment Weekly. “The scene called for me to ride my horse right up next to the rear of the train, until I was close enough to grab a handle on the car. However, I was plainly told not to actually grab that handle—in no way should I try to do that, or pull myself off the horse and onto the train.”
Instead, he rode the horse next to the train and then stopped to let the professional stuntmen replace him.
Lloyd said he agreed to sit out the stunt knowing that it would carry “too much risk” for the shoot. However, he still felt the urge to finish the scene by himself.
“I was within reach,” he recalled. “And I just felt, I can do this. It’s there. I almost put everything in jeopardy. But I didn’t, and that was a close call.”
The actor said that while he will never know if the stunt would have been successful, he still feels disappointed that he never tried.
“Who knows what would have happened next? But whenever I watch the movie and see that scene, I still feel that pang in my heart: I should have done it,” he said.
In addition to playing Doc from 1985 to 1990, Lloyd is known for his roles as Klingon Commander Kruge in 1984’s Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, Uncle Fester in The Addams Family franchise and Judge Doom in the 1988 classic Who Framed Roger Rabbit.
Despite his decades in the spotlight, Lloyd has largely kept his private life a secret until now, with the release of his memoir five days after his birthday.
The actor announced the book on his Instagram in May, with a picture of the manuscript captioned: “I told you when this baby hits 88, you’re gonna see some serious s***. A lifetime of stories. Coming soon.”
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