From the Forever Amy Jo Johnson Site

Who is Amy Jo Johnson?
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-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!"

Ranger Danger
Although working on the TV show may have beep fun, Amy Jo aspired to become a film actress. While the series did open some doors, it just didn't have enough oomph to pry the right doors open. "I left Power Rangers because . . . I knew that that particular job couldn't help me any further in getting to my dream," she explained to her online fan club. Power Rangers was Amy Jo's first TV series andher first movie, but enough was enough. Amy Jo even had to turn to the guitar and Songwriting because Power Rangers had ceased to provide a satisfying means of self-expression. She found other creative outlets in the forms of painting and writing in her journal. Playing Kimberly the Pink Ranger for over two years left Amy Jo feeling suffocated. Having gleaned all she could from her days as a super-hero, she was now in dire need of space to explore new and more multi-dimensional characters. But leaving the show would mean taking a leap of faith. What if she couldn't find more work? What if no one wanted to hire her because her only experience was as a Power Ranger? It was a chance she had to take. Ever since her swinging days on the uneven bars, Amy Jo had welcomed every opportunity to overcome her fears. She wasn't about to stop now. And after landing the title role in Susie Q, a made-for-TV movie featuring Shelley Long, she left the TV show and hasn't looked back since. The film's plot revolved around Amy Jo's character, a teenage tomboy who is killed during the night of her prom, only to return years later as a ghost trying to save her family from ruin. Amy Jo was thrilled with her first serious departure from her Mighty Morphin alter ego. She saw it as a chance to prove, once and for all, that her many years of drama studies had not gone to waste. Nevertheless, coming off Power Rangers confirmed Amy Jo's worst fears. Industry people still judged her acting ability based on this particular project and she wasn't getting the chance to audition for high-quality material. It was frustrating but Amy Jo knew better than to give up. Instead, she looked to other actresses who had surmounted similar trials for inspiration, such as one-time Flying Nun Sally Field. "I get a lot of flak being an ex Power Ranger," Amy Jo has admitted. "I think that it makes it harder for me to get work, but I am trudging through the stereotype and will get past it with dedication and persistence," she told her fans during an on-line chat session.

Free at Last!
Amy Jo's commitment coupled with her strong performance in Susie Q soon helped her transcend the Ranger association. During the years of 1996 through 1997, she had starring roles in three movies. Admittedly, Turbo: A Power Rangers Movie was a backslide into the Pink Ranger fatigues. But when Power Rangers' creator, Haim Saban, personally asked Amy Jo to appear in the film, she just couldn't refuse. Decent and loyal to the core, Amy Jo still felt she owed a debt of gratitude to the man who gave her first break. It was the other two films, Killing Mr. Griffin and Perfect Body, that saw Amy Jo playing complex new characters. In Killing Mr. Griffin, Amy Jo portrayed one of a group of high school students who attempt to find the murderer of their surly timely demise. Making this movie turned out to be a particularly special experience. "My favorite work that I have done would have to be Killing Mr. Griffin," said Amy Jo in another online chat session. "I just loved the people I worked with and the material was very exciting to me. "Perfect Body was another film in which Amy Jo confirmed her ability to carry a film. In this movie-of-the-week, she played a gymnast who has to leave high school in order to begin intensive training with a renowned coach, and develops an eating disorder as a result. The role was perfect for the twenty- six- year- old actress. Not only was she a whiz on the balance beam, but she could she still be easily mistaken for a teenager. Amy Jo did manage to get quite a scare while filming the movie. In one scene, she was supposed to head out the door carrying a waffle that her movie mom had given her for the road. When she got out of the house, she was to quickly throw the offending, high-calorie item into the nearest trash can. "While rolling someone had climbed into the garbage without my knowing and when I reached out to throw away my waffle they reached out and I screamed bloody murder and ran," recounted Amy Jo online. She still remembers the moment as one of the funniest bloopers of her on-screen career.

Joy and Pain
After the completion of Perfect Body, it would take Amy Jo several months to land another substantial role. In the meantime, she attended acting classes and spent more time on her music. While most actors would have panicked at the dry spell, Amy Jo wasn't sweating the small stuff. "I saved all my money. I was smart," she said in an AFX interview. Having squirreled away a tidy sum during her Pink Ranger period, the penny-wise actress was living comfortably off of her savings until the next big job came along. As it turned out, the next job that came along wasn't big, it was huge. A once in a lifetime, career-booster of an opportunity, all wrapped up in a heartwarming script entitled Felicity. When she read it, she could actually see herself as JuIie Emrick, Felicity's best friend. She knew she was right for the role, and J.J. Abrams and Matt Reeves agreed. Amy Jo was one of the first actors to be brought onto the show. "She's as amazing as Keri," Abrams said to Entertainment Weekly. While Amy Jo tried to match her costars' zest and enthusiasm; this wasn't an easy thing to do given that her mother was sick during the first month of shooting. "It was really hard for me to be too excited about the show, but it was actually a blessing to have something good going on at the same time," she told the Associated Press. Her castmates' sympathy and understanding also helped Amy Jo get through the ordeal. Soon enough, things began looking up. After filming the series pilot, Amy Jo was cast as a reluctant vampire in the film Cold Hearts. A highly anticipated feature film about the inspiring life of runner Steve Prefontaine, called Without Limits, in which Amy Jo had won a small role, was also scheduled to be released soon. Best of all, Felicity was looking like a shoo-in for the coming fall season. Everything was platinum. Save, of course, the reservations which the network executives expressed about Amy Jo's casting as Julie. Last minute casting changes such as this are not at all uncommon, but the show's creators weren't budging. It was hardly Amy Jo's fault that the pilot episode focused mostly on Felicity, and left Julie lurking in the shadows. They went to bat for Amy Jo, insisting that she remain on the show. "We were so concerned with creating a compelling lead character that some things fell through the cracks," said J.J. Abrams to Entertainment Weekly. "Any actress would've suffered the same reaction Amy Jo got." The executives soon caved in, and even admitted to having made a mistake after previewing the second episode. Amy Jo really did make for an exceedingly convincing Julie.

Time Off For Good Behavior
Living in Los Angeles, the epicenter of the music industry, it was only a matter of time before singer/songwriter Amy Jo would try to form a band. To sing professionally had been one of her childhood dreams, and after she learned how to play the guitar she started allocating more time to fulfilling it. In 1995, she recorded her first demo tape, which was heavily influenced by Sinead O'Connor and the Indigo Girls. When this didn't yield a bumper crop of recording contract offers, she decided to expand her act and sound by putting together a band. Today, Amy Jo plays guitar, sings, and writes songs with her group, The Amy Jo Johnson Band. With the independent internet release of their first album - The Trans-American Treatment, they perform rock music in a variety of LA bars and coffee shops. Doing the show and playing in the band doesn't leave much room for gymnastics, but Amy Jo does make time for her oil painting. Like writing songs, painting is something Amy Jo does to get in touch with her emotions. "My painting is my own private love," Amy Jo told her fans online. Since the nature of her art work is highly personal, she would never dream of exhibiting her creations. With such a busy schedule one would think Amy Jo is all work and no play. But somehow, the gymnast/actress/artist/musician does find time for her more trivial pursuits. "For fun in LA, I hang out with a group of my friends I love dearly," said Amy Jo online. "We do everything from going out to bars to just hanging out and playing music at home."