Zach Galligan's Crush On Phoebe Cates Helped Him Land The Lead In Gremlins

Phoebe Cates nearly ended Zach Galligan's career before she helped launch it.

Galligan was the New York City-born son of a corporate lawyer and a psychologist when, in his late teens, he landed his first major Hollywood audition. The film was Paul Mazursky's contemporized adaptation of William Shakespeare's "The Tempest," and it promised to be a powerhouse actor's showcase what with John Cassavetes and Gena Rowlands already cast in the lead roles.

Mazursky and casting director Juliet Taylor were looking for a young actor to play the film's version of Ferdinand, the Prince of Naples who falls in love with Prospero's daughter Miranda. Given the production's pedigree, Galligan was competing against and reading with a who's who of up-and-coming performers, many of whom already had a movie or two under their belt.

One of these up-and-comers was Phoebe Cates, a showbiz kid who'd been on the cover of Seventeen magazine and had just completed her first feature, a dreadful rip-off of "The Blue Lagoon" called "Paradise." Galligan's introduction to Cates proved to be a propitious moment for the actor, but, during that "Tempest" audition, it felt like an utter disaster.

According to The Ringer's 40th anniversary oral history of Joe Dante's classic "Gremlins," Galligan's poise skedaddled out of the room when Cates walked in. Taylor was trying to determine if Galligan (or his competition) could strike up some chemistry with one of the female candidates for Miranda (they call these "mix-and-match sessions"). As far as Galligan was concerned, Cates was the one. As he told The Ringer, "[W]hen she walked in, I was like, 'Holy smokes.' She and I read, and she was fun, and she did the fun giggly thing. She had the 'I'm not even remotely nervous to be in this room' type vibe thing, which is so crucial.".

Galligan, on the other hand, had white knuckles and likely pit stains. Though he thinks he gathered himself and put in a good showing, Mazursky and Taylor opted for Sam Robards (the son of Jason Robards and Lauren Bacall). Despite wowing Galligan, Cates lost the part of Miranda to an unknown named Molly Ringwald.

Taylor encouraged Galligan to stick with acting, which he did. Finally, after a year or so of disappointments, Galligan impressed casting director Susan Arnold and producer Mike Finnell enough to find himself in a mix-and-match session for Joe Dante's "Gremlins." Once again, it was a pedigreed production (this time behind the camera thanks to the presence of producer Steven Spielberg), and, as with "Tempest," Galligan would once again be paired with Cates.

This time, the dynamic was totally different. Though Cates had broken through in a big way with "Fast Times at Ridgemont High," she was reading for the supporting role of Kate Beringer, the kind-hearted love interest of protagonist Billy Peltzer. Galligan was, of course, up for Billy. When Cates spied him in the waiting room, she remembered him from "Tempest," and insisted they read together. "It just felt like we'd kind of known each other forever," said Cates.

When the duo got in the room with Dante, Cates took over, which allowed Galligan to play to his understated, hangdog strengths. As Galligan told The Ringer, "I think her being so calm, cool, and collected and sucking all the energy out of the room and making me a bit of an afterthought was a good thing, because it took all of the pressure off of me. Usually the spotlight's on just you."

Galligan's instincts were spot on. Cates was cast immediately. Going with Galligan, however, required Spielberg's signoff. So Dante and Finnell took the tape to their producer, and crossed their fingers. Spielberg's reaction was confounding in a good way. As Galligan and Dante related to The Ringer:

"Galligan: Apparently when Spielberg saw me put my head on her shoulder, he turned to Joe and he said, 'Stop the tape. Just turn it off.' And they were like, 'What?' Joe and Mike thought he wanted to discuss something. And he got up, started walking out. And they said, 'What?'

Dante: Steven turned to me and said, 'We've got to cast him. He's already in love with her.'"

This was lightning-in-a-bottle casting. Galligan and Cates' wide-eyed innocence perfectly offset the cartoonish savagery of the Gremlins. Without two sweet-natured kids to root for, Dante's film would've been a live-action Chuck Jones short — which he eventually made with "Gremlins 2: The New Batch" (a classic in its own right, but we needed a sense of order before we got to pure anarchy).