By Jae-Ha Kim
Chicago Sun-Times
January 8, 1988
Actress Ann-Marie Johnson said she hopes good parts for minorities will increase. But she’s not holding her breath.
“I don’t like to think of myself as a black actress, but that’s how a lot of casting directors view me,” she said from her Los Angeles home during a telephone interview. “Especially in Hollywood, where everyone’s supposed to be blond and blue-eyed, black actors have a difficult time finding work.”
The almost 6-foot actress stars in the syndicated comedy series “What’s Happening Now!” It airs on Saturdays at 5:30 p.m. on WFLD-Channel 32. She just completed her third year on the show as Nadine, a social worker.
“Unfortunately Nadine hasn’t changed at all since she was introduced to the show,” she said. “I think that’s a common procedure in sit-coms where there’s this stable female character. The show has been a growing experience in one way and stabilizing in another way but stagnant in another. But I’ve been very fortunate because the people on the show are so nice to work with.”
She said she feels at a disadvantage to her white peers because she’s rarely considered for roles that aren’t written specifically for black women.
“I was up for a role for a new show and I was perfect for one of the roles as a socialite who is thrown into prison, but they wanted me to read for the black role,” Johnson said. “And then they told me I was too attractive for the black role. I’ve lost a few roles for not being black enough in vernacular.”
Laughing, she added, “The people in power still don’t think there are attractive minorities in the country, so we’re struggling to persevere.”
Though she’s been rejected for some parts because she’s too pretty, Johnson said she was ugly as a child.
“I knew in the sixth grade I wanted to be an actress and I think part of the reason was because I could pretend I was pretty,” she said. “I was ugly. My mother begs to differ, but what mother wouldn’t? At junior high school I was 5 feet 8 and 98 pounds. I looked like the poster child for anorexia. I hate it when people say kids are so wonderful because they’re honest. Kids are brutal.
“I was always a very happy child but I had to really slug it out at school. So theater always came as a nice place to act, and I always had comedic timing and was very extroverted, so it was the perfect niche for me.”
She also played the violin in the symphony orchestra, sang in the chorus, and played competitive tennis. After high school she enrolled at UCLA and earned her B.A. in theater arts.
Johnson, 27, is best known for her role as Robert Townsend’s girlfriend in “Hollywood Shuffle.” Townsend was familiar with her work on “Double Trouble,” another situation comedy she was in.
“He asked me if I wanted to be in this little project he was working on,” she recalled. “I said, `Sure!’ I think we all thought we were just doing Robert a favor. None of us had regular gigs and we worked for no money. We didn’t get paid for this until a year after we finished. We began filming in 1984 and it took over two years to do, off and on. But it worked and while it really hasn’t helped us get other jobs, it at least made our faces recognizable. I’m very proud of it.”
Johnson has another film coming out next March. “Robojox” is a futuristic film about life after the atomic bomb. War is fought through athletic events instead of the battlefield. Johnson has the lead role of Athena, a genetically engineered athlete.
“It’s a very positive movie about countries getting along, but what I also liked about it is, it had a multi-racial cast. We have Asians and Hispanics and blacks and whites and it was all done without making the race issue the pivotal point of the movie. It was very creative casting.”
It was filmed in Rome and it was the first time she had been away from home for more than a couple of weeks. Born and raised in Los Angeles, Johnson said she had a privileged upbringing. Her father was an executive in the oil industry.
She said her parents encouraged her to pursue acting.
“I had always done well academically, so they knew I could always fall back on a legitimate career if acting didn’t work out,” she said, laughing. “They had confidence in me and that, in turn, made me feel better about myself.”
Johnson has a string of theater productions to her credit, including a lead in “Southern Girls,” where she aged from 8 to 22 during the course of the play.
In the future, Johnson wants to develop her singing. Though she has no plans to record an album, she said she would love to sing in nightclubs or play a singer in a movie.
“Everyone assumes if you’re black you sing gospel,” she said. “I sing more like Carly Simon: real tangible music, where other people can sing along. I think Karen Carpenter was great.”
Her top priority is working, and she doesn’t care if it’s on television, theater or film. And unlike many of her peers who say they only will work on “quality” projects, Johnson has a more realistic attitude.
“I just want to work!” she said. “Whatever comes along, if it’s good, or even if it isn’t good, I want to act. I need to make a living. My goal is that by age 35 I will be able to choose my projects. I admire Meryl Streep and I’d like to get to that point. But if not, I’d just like to keep working.
“If the job offers cease for a while, I’ll continue doing a lot of local plays and keep on honing the craft so I don’t become stagnant on the months off.”
When she has spare time, Johnson plays in celebrity tennis matches and donates her winnings to charities. She also lectures at inner-city schools about the dangers of drugs and alcohol. She said some people laugh at her when she says she’s never smoked, drank liquor, or done drugs.
“It’s just something I’ve never delved into or had a desire to,” she said. “There’s just been too many deaths because of people who were intoxicated. I’ve lost two friends from drunk drivers. Everyone knows it’s bad for you but they do it anyway. I can’t understand that.”
