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Amy Jo Johnson played the role of Felicity's gal pal, Julie Emrick. And although she may be a fresh face to many of the show's viewers, Amy Jo is no stranger to fame. By playing the Pink Ranger on the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers TV series, Amy Jo has already gained quite a following among the action-figure and lunch-box set crowd. But the Ranger days have long since ended, and while her image has remained alive and well in Mighty Morphin reruns, Amy Jo has had to struggle to overcome the stereotypes associated with the controversial kids' TV show. It hasn't been an easy road by any means, but the thirty-two year-old actress has managed to make remarkable progress through it all. Felicity's premise is something to which Amy Jo can personally relate. It wasn't so long ago that she herself had left her hometown behind to study acting in New York. And even though it had always been one of her dreams to become a big star, it was the New York drama schools that sparked Amy Jo's passion for the art of acting.
Going for the Gold Acting may be what finally proved successful for the captivating actress, but Amy Jo nurtured another childhood dream as well. Like her costar, Scott Speedman, Amy Jo had also set her sights on the Olympic Games. From the age of seven, gymnastics was her specialty, and Nadia Comaneci her hero. While she was very interested in perfecting her acting ability, acting classes hardly compared to tumbling and doing cartwheels all day. Her coaches and parents realized that with her petite build and dedication, Amy Jo could go far in the sport. She was a gymnast for ten years, practicing her vault and floor exercises at the Cape Cod Gymnastics Club and competing internationally both in the U.S. and in Europe" She credits gymnastics for her fearlessness, telling TV Guide, ''I learned very early that being afraid makes you hesitate. So I tend to do things that scare me." Perhaps it was this attitude that incited her to leave her parents and hometown of Cape Cod to brave the big, bad New York City terrain at age nineteen. By the time Amy Jo realized that she wouldn't make it to the Olympics, she was already a sophomore in high school. Since most of her life had been spent in pursuit of athletic achievement, she felt like a consummate failure, as if she had wasted ten years of her life. Years later, she would come to the conclusion that her gymnastics training had served two vital functions. First, it helped get her through high school, where, Amy Jo recently told YM magazine, ''I was a bit of an outcast." And most important, it was her gymnastics ability that landed Amy Jo her very first on-camera role-Kimberly, the Pink Ranger. New Beginnings By the time she made the requisite actor's pilgrimage to Hollywood, the world's movie Mecca, Amy Jo was already a trained actress. She had studied method at the renowned Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute and at the American Musical and Acting Academy in New York. Having appeared on stage in numerous student productions, she decided to go to LA for the many opportunities to work in film. The silver screen initially beckoned to Amy Jo when she was still in grade school. Her first acting experience had come at age eleven, when she was coerced-into sharing the part of Annie with another student in a school play. She moved on to even grander small-scale productions in high school. What few people realized while watching Amy Jo perform was that she suffered from a bad case of stage fright. "I used to get so nervous before going on stage that I would cry. I even threw -up," she told TV Guide. But no amount of stage fright could ever tear Amy Jo away from her overwhelming need for attention. Born in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, on October 6, 1970, she was the youngest of her two siblings. She grew up in a tight-knit family, spending much quality time with her parents as well as her grandparents who lived nearby. The love lavished upon Amy Jo as the baby of the family became addictive. "I really wanted the attention," she said on a radio show. First, she sought to recreate the feeling through gymnastics and then through acting. While still in high school, Amy Jo started taking summer _ acting workshops at the Orleans Academy Playhouse, focusing her energy on improving her acting skills. She always believed that she was capable of doing anything she put her mind to. As if to prove this maxim, she even entered the Miss Teen Massachusetts pageant when she was sixteen. While the tiara proved elusive, Amy Jo did manage to come home a finalist. After high school graduation, she began taking acting classes in New York. She immediately fell in love with the city and everything about it. "It's my favorite place in the whole world," she said in an online chat. The training she received in New York allowed her to see beyond the glitz and glamour of celebrity. She learned that she would have to curtail her hunger for attention if she ever hoped to become a serious actress. "I realized I was falling in love with a passion," Amy Jo continued, "something much more substantial than just wanting the attention. "Having finally discovered what the acting craft was all about, she couldn't wait to put her skills to work in front of the camera. "I studied at Lee Strasberg's Academy for one year and a half. Then I got in a car and went out to LA. It was a real spur of the moment thing," said Amy Jo in an AFX interview in Japan. Beginner's Luck After a scant two months in Los Angeles, Amy was ready to throw in the towel. The city just wasn't doing it for her. She missed the-hustle and bustle of the East Coast, telling AFX, "It's totally different from New York. Like in New York you don't need a car, the energy's totally different. "Without any fanfare, Amy Jo packed up and moved back home. Two weeks later, she was back in La-La-Land and prepping for her first audition for Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. The executive producer was looking for someone with gymnastics ability, and Amy Jo fit the bill. She was offered the job, and began paying her own way in Los Angeles in no time. "I was really lucky to get a part just a week after getting to the West Coast," Amy Jo told AFX. Soon she was meeting people and making new friends. Within months she had completely assimilated to the LA way of life. Meanwhile, her work on Power Rangers was also teaching her a lot about "the technical aspects of being an actor." "I've treated it like going to school . . . Iearning to be in front of the camera,', she explained to her fans in online chats. And as Amy Jo was learning the ropes, the show was quickly becoming the most popular kids' show on the Fox network. There were Power Ranger videos, action figures, trading cards, and even an Amy Jo "Pink Ranger" Johnson fan club. She couldn't believe how much attention her show was receiving. It was all so new and exciting. Often, she would actually surf the Net, making sure to check up on the Web sites dedicated to herself and her show. Seeing the kind comments from all the kids who were fans of her work gratified Amy Jo to no end. The TV show became so popular that a movie based on the show was soon in development. This was a completely unprecedented experience for Amy Jo, who had never worked on a film before. The whole cast traveled to Sydney, Australia, to shoot the picture. Back home, the cast members had limited their relationships with one another to the set. But once in Australia, all that quickly changed. Since Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie took approximately three months to shoot, "we ended up hanging out a lot more, going out at night 'cause we didn't know anybody else,"Amy Jo reminisced in Teen Beat magazine. But catching up with her costars wasn't the only good thing to come out of the film. The shoot also gave Amy Jo the chance to work with Paul Freeman, who portrayed the requisite villain on the film. Amy called this former Raiders of the Lost Ark thespian "an amazing actor." The director, Bryan Spicer, also made a.great impression on the young actress. In fact, everyone on the set got along famously. Wearing the new Power Rangers costumes, designed especially for the film, may have been the real bonding agent. Each Ranger, 100-pound Amy Jo included, had to don a forty pound costume for the role. Amy Jo still shudders at the thought, telling Teen Beat "We had to be in them for like ten hours a day!" |
