Lori Singer Breaks Free Of Teen Roles With `Shoe`

August 2, 1985|By Judy Klemesrud, The New York Times

Lori Singer, who for a while seemed to be playing every teen-age role that wasn`t offered to Molly Ringwald or Ally Sheedy, finally has grown up. In fact, it will be hard to think of her as a teen-ager again after her appearance as Maddy, the sexy, intense, career-driven government agent in the Stan Dragoti comedy The Man With One Red Shoe.

``I love it,`` said Singer, who is 23. ``After Fame and Footloose, I kept getting offered all these teen parts. It`s really nice to play an adult for a change.``

In the film, Maddy falls in love with a violinist (played by Tom Hanks) who unknowingly becomes involved in a bizarre conspiracy in which he is bugged, shadowed and almost wiped out by government agents.

Singer said she prepared for the part by talking with two female CIA agents and by copying the mannerisms of a New York management consultant named Susan Engel, who is a friend. ``Susan really inspired me,`` Singer said. ``I got Maddy`s intensity and sharpness and speed from her.``

Singer, who is 5-foot-10 and has long blond hair, originally planned to be a cellist. She is a graduate of Juilliard, where she was first cellist in the school`s orchestra, and she has played professionally with a number of groups. Her father, Jacques Singer, was a symphony orchestra conductor, and her mother, Leslie, is a concert pianist. Her twin brother, Gregory, is a violinist.

But, like her older brother, Marc Singer, star of the television series V, she chose acting. ``In a world where such terrible things are happening,`` she said, ``it`s just so fantastic to become someone else.``

She was first noticed in the role of the shy cellist in the television series Fame. In the film Footloose, she played the daughter of a preacher who longs to break out of her strict small-town environment, and in The Falcon and the Snowman she played Timothy Hutton`s girlfriend.

Singer lives in New York with her husband, Richard Emery, a civil liberties lawyer. She said she was not worried that her part as the secret agent would cause her to be typecast in sexy roles, because she has just finished an Alan Rudolph film called Trouble in Mind, with Kris Kristofferson and Keith Carradine, in which her character is very different from Maddy

Last year at this time, Joe Dante, the director, was riding high because his film Gremlins was one of the biggest hits of the summer. This year, his Explorers has not gotten the same attention, and one reason is that it is a fantasy film with children. A number of other films that opened sooner had the same idea, including Goonies and Back to the Future.

``It`s just one of those unfortunate things you have to deal with,`` said Dante, 38. ``I once did a werewolf film called The Howling, and all of sudden two other werewolf movies were out.``

Despite its similarities to the other films, Dante said he regarded Explorers as something special. ``It`s the first picture I did where no one gets killed,`` he said. ``In Piranha, I wiped out an entire summer camp of kids.``