Back to the Future Trilogy, Red Dawn, Caroline in the City
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$14 Million
"My beauty secret is to try to keep my heart as open and happy as I can, because it really makes the sad lines on my face look better."
Lea Thompson is an actress who survived Jaws 3-D (1983) and Howard the Duck (1986) early in her career, two of the biggest critical flops of that decade, but Thompson kept right on going. Audiences knew she had the goods, and let's just say that starring in the Back to the Future trilogy (1985-90) generates a lot of goodwill, and it doesn't hurt that she barely seems to age. Charming, versatile and funny, Lea Thompson has never been anything less than a delight to see on film and television.
A Talented Dancer, But...
Lea Thompson was born May 31, 1961 in Rochester, Minnesota to Clifford and Barbara Barry Thompson. One of five children Lea fell in love with ballet at a young age and was not the only dancer in the family, her brother Andrew would also go on to study ballet. At fourteen years old, Lea had already won a bounty of scholarships, to the Pennsylvania Ballet, the American Ballet Theatre, and the San Francisco Ballet. She would dance professionally with the American Ballet Theatre's Studio Company at the age of twenty, but ultimately accept a bit of tough-love criticism from Mikhail Baryshnikov, who informed the young dancer that she simply didn't have the right build to achieve the rank of a prima ballerina. Although this could have been heartbreaking, Lea Thompson appreciated the review. "It was a wonderful moment because I could've been banging my head against the wall for another ten years."
Rather than give up on her dream of working in show business, Lea chose to focus her efforts on acting. Before making her film debut, Lea featured in a number of TV commercials, and even a video game, MysteryDisc: Murder, Anyone? (1982) and as it turns out, Lea is something of a gamer herself. "I mostly played 'Pac-Man', but I played 'The Sims' with my kids when they were growing up."
Her screen debut would come with Jaws 3-D (1983), a part that she won with a little fibbing, claiming to be an experienced water-skier, and then scrambling to learn the ropes in the five days she had before filming. Soon she would feature in the classic 80s film Red Dawn (1984), following a group of high schoolers who fend off a soviet invasion. The role would turn out ot be a dream come true for the young actress, allowing her to live out her daydreams after growing up a lifelong western fan. "Red Dawn was really the most fun I ever had making a movie, because I love Westerns, and I love the idea of being a tomboy, and riding horses and shooting guns."
After Red Dawn she would land a defining role of her career as Lorraine McFly in Back to the Future (1985). Seamlessly switching from the middle-aged matriarch of the McFly family to the wide-eyed teen girl in the 1950s, Lea Thompson proved a natural for the film's particular brand of awkward comedy.
Next came Howard the Duck (1986). Earning only $15 million on a $37 million budget and being panned by critics as one of the worst movies of all time, the first feature length theatrical release for a Marvel comics character would turn out to be one of the biggest failures in cinematic history. Like many "worst" movies, Howard the Duck has gone on to earn a cult following of its own, and Lea Thompson doesn't seem to mind her association with the film. "Howard The Duck has a lot of fans, and usually when they come up to me, I just think they're the coolest. Because it takes a lot of strength, a lot of perseverance to love Howard the Duck."
As it turns out, the momentum of Lea Thompson's career couldn't be slowed down even by a historically unprecedented flop. By 1989, Back to the Future Part II (1989) and Back to the Future Part III (1990), shot back-to-back, would remind audiences of why they loved Lea Thompson so much, and she would go on to star as Dennis' mom in Dennis the Menace (1993) alongside Walter Matthau, and as the villain in The Beverly Hillbillies (1993).
A number of movie roles and TV parts would follow, but by the mid-1990s, Lea was at the point many actresses reach. No longer young enough to play the girlfriends in high school comedies, and not quite old enough to play older women. Fortunately, Caroline in the City (1995-99) was right around the corner.
Caroline in the City
"Caroline In The City was such an interesting thing, because I'd never been on the set of a sitcom or even auditioned for a sitcom when they gave me that part."
On the sitcom that would win her a People's Choice Award, Lea Thompson starred as the titular character of Caroline in the City, cartoonist Caroline Duffy. The character was loosely based on female cartoonists like Cathy Guisewite of Cathy, and followed her romances and misadventure in the city of Manhattan. Being slotted right between Seinfeld and ER helped the show to pick up a following quickly, and the series ran until 1999, establishing an older, wiser Lea Thompson at the top of her game, and still as funny and as beautiful as she'd ever been.
In the 2000s, Thompson would get her first taste of directing, starring in a number of episodes of the TV anthology series Jane Doe (2005-2008), and directing two entries herself, "The Harder They Fall" (2006), and "Eye of the Beholder" (2008). Since then she's helmed five episodes of sitcom The Goldbergs (2016-19), two episodes of Schooled (2019), and most recently, "Mass for Shut-Ins", an episode of the critically acclaimed period sitcom The Kids Are Alright (2019).
"Of course, I'd like to produce and direct a blockbuster, but you gotta build up to that. So now I'm learning from a bunch of little movies. And it's more fun with smaller pictures. It's more creative."
While Lea's focus has primarily been behind the camera of late, this doesn't mean that she's left acting behind, having appeared in four episodes of CBS action-drama Scorpion (2016-17), and even reprising her role of Caroline Duffy for an episode of American Dad! in 2016.
Whether Lea chooses to pursue more acting work in the future or devote herself entirely to her promising career as a director, Howard the Duck should serve as evidence enough that Thompson can do no wrong.
"I always felt like my best years would be from 50 to 65 years old. I don't know why. It was a feeling I had even when I was really young."
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