It's only fitting that Michael J. Fox and Tracy Pollan met on a show called Family Ties . A lot of care went into picking the right actress to play Alex P.
Keaton's girlfriend, a strong woman who could match wits with the young Reaganite. Enter Pollan, who at 25 was asked to play 18-year-old brainy dancer Ellen Reed, opposite Fox, who at 24 was playing 19 on the seminal 1980s sitcom. "People got tired of all those glitzy, power-hungry people jumping in the sack," Pollan told People in 1986.
"Alex and Ellen have an old-fashioned relationship. It's unjaded and optimistic with the sweetness of a first love." As it tends to go in real life, Alex and Ellen didn't last—but Fox and Pollan found their forever match and are celebrating 36 years of marriage July 16.
Not that they clicked immediately ...
In fact, the two rarely spent time together off set because, as Pollan also told People , "I fly home to Kevin the second filming shuts down." Kevin being Kevin Bacon , her boyfriend of five years, whom she'd met doing a play in New York and with whom she shared a Manhattan apartment and a Connecticut farmhouse. "We will probably marry, but I feel like we're kids still, and marriage is such a grown-up thing," Pollan said.
At the same time, she added, "I'm gushingly in love." Of his costar, Fox said, "Tracy is really a fish out of water in L.A.
She's so unassuming and natural that it is hard for her to fit in." Pollan recalled to People in 2018 of her costar, "He was funny, but he was .