Footloose Interview: Lori Singer on Doing Her Own Stunts & Working With Kevin Bacon
ComingSoon Editor-in-Chief Tyler Treese spoke with Footloose star Lori Singer to celebrate the iconic movie‘s 40th anniversary. The actress discussed doing the wild truck scene herself and the experience of working with Kevin Bacon, Sarah Jessica Parker, and John Lithgow. You can buy the film on 4K now in a 40th-anniversary SteelBook.
“Moving in from Chicago, newcomer Ren McCormack (Kevin Bacon) is in shock when he discovers the small Midwestern town he now calls home has made dancing and rock music illegal,” reads the film‘s synopsis. “As he struggles to fit in, Ren faces an uphill battle to change things. With the help of his new friend, Willard Hewitt (Christopher Penn), and defiant teen Ariel Moore (Lori Singer), he might loosen up this conservative town. But Ariel’s influential father, Reverend Shaw Moore (John Lithgow), stands in the way.”
Tyler Treese: Footloose is still so fun, and though it’s a movie that’s easy to poke fun at, there’s such positivity within the film. What about its themes have really resonated with you, especially removed from the project?
Lori Singer: Well, I’d say it’s just a classic American rebel story, and that’s what’s so … it has such staying power forever because it really is about a rebel challenging everything. I think we all have a bit of the rebel in us, and sometimes we all want to challenge a lot but we don’t. Ariel has no hesitation. She’s at an age where she will question, and she will challenge. And she’s also a little bit wilder than the place where she’s from. She doesn’t really follow rules well. [Laughs]. And so she’s kind of defining her own idea of what freedom is. I think that never gets old. I think it’s always interesting. We all struggle with that in our everyday life.
We wonder, “What question do we ask? How do we move here? How do we get through this situation? What job is next? Should I do this? Should I not do this?” And with Ariel, she’s just like, “You know what? I don’t like this. I don’t like what’s going on here. This sermon is going on too long.” She’s just open to experiencing everything in a new way and looking at life in a new way. She’s not afraid to tell people she’s just a full-out rebel.
She’s also living dangerously very early on, especially in the scene where you’re crossing between the vehicles. What parts of that did you actually film?
I did all of it. I did all of it.
Oh, wow.
Yeah, we also had a stunt person for when the truck came. So that back shot with the truck … I was not doing it with the truck, but everything else I actually did, because I felt like I could. [Laughs]. I don’t know what to say. Why does anyone do … in life, why does Tom Cruise take that motorcycle and go off the thing, but why is that orchestrated in such a way? That’s a rebel. That’s somebody who sees another way of looking at something. And I think Ariel … this is a classic film with a female heroine who is totally rebelling against everything. She sees that moment as a moment to challenge her own physicality.
“Can I get from here to the truck? I’ve never quite done this before. Wait a minute, I want to go now.” And also shock her friends, because they’re trying to pull her back, which is actually more dangerous. So that as she’s reaching out, they’re pulling her back and pulling her feet back. I don’t know if you really saw that, but there were a couple things that were actually more dangerous than even exhibited. So it’s basically the feeling of, “I can do this.” And she’s challenging her father at every turn. It’s kind of like, to her father, “I’m going to do this and I’m going to be fine, and this is going to be a lot of fun and crazy, and I’m going to end up with Chuck.” She doesn’t expect the truck. [Laughs]. The truck is an added dimension, but they get through it. It makes it even more exciting for her, I think.
You mentioned her friends — one of those was played by Sarah Jessica Parker. This was one of her very first film roles. How was it working with her?
Just great, just absolutely fun. She was a lot like the character. She was giggly and cute and following along. We all loved Kevin [Bacon], we all loved Chris [Penn]. We all loved Jim [Youngs]. All of the female characters loved the male counterparts and vice versa. I mean, we were living it. We felt like that was our high school, that was our life. So she jumped into that role as my best friend, and it was lovely. She was also a very supportive best friend, telling me what was happening with Ren when I asked her. She was keeping tabs on everything.
I wanted to ask about you and Kevin Bacon because, immediately, when you see the two characters on screen together, you want to see them get together. The chemistry is just undeniable. Was that an initial “click” with him or did that have to be built up during filming?
No, it was just immediate. [Laughs]. I think that Herbert Ross is one of the directors that really believes in casting. And that his job, a lot of it, is helped and created by the casting. He wants his characters to be more that character even than written and live it more than even written, and show him even more than he expected. I think Kevin and I just … I was the rebel and he was the kid from out of town.
And just the second we met, that was what happened. I was testing him. It just happened naturally. Part of it is because we both were already so invested in this script. We both had studied the script so intensely. We’d had time with it. We’d thought about it. We’d been chosen as that person. So we took it very seriously.
“How do we embody this full life? How do we embody this in just one scene, in every scene?” We took it very seriously. All the acting was very serious. Herb really wanted it to be looked at as a serious film. He wanted it to be able to stand without any dancing. He wanted it to be that serious. So it’s rare you have a director with that kind of focus. When you throw Kenny Loggins on top of that, it’s fire. That was what it was.
I wanted to ask about your reaction when you first heard Kenny Loggins’ song, because it’s still so memorable to this day. It’s the perfect song for the film.
It was just … I thought it’d always been there. I couldn’t imagine. In other words, it’s so powerful. It’s just as if you thought you’d always been hearing it in your head, the entire film. It’s so organic.
You mentioned that the film could stand up even without the dance scenes, and I was surprised at how few dance scenes there were in the film, but the few that are there are so great. About the big dance at the end — everybody looks like they’re having the time of their life. How was it filming that?
I thought it was really fun. [Laughs]. They dropped these little glitter things down, which were kind of weird, but it was really fun. It was just really fun. Everything about it was a party because it just was fun. It was a celebration of dance, and that’s what it was.
Rewatching this, I was so blown away by John Lithgow as your father in the film, and I thought he really fleshed out that character. How was it working with him as a scene partner? You two have some really great moments together.
Oh, thank you for asking that. It was spectacular. John and I clicked right away also. We had a lot of scenes that were sort of at each other and a lot of scenes that were kind of questioning of each other and me trying to reach out to him and him not getting the hint and me being just out-and-out rebellious at him and him blowing up.
We had a lot of transitions. I mean, Ariel’s a character that has a lot of transitions and, in the end, kind of comes to a sort of understanding that she thinks she’s right and that he has to change his ways. She sort of has grown up through the whole film. She’s had all these rabble-rousing, rebellious moments and being triumphant is really important to her, so that they got the dance, that she got Kevin, that she got the entire entire town to understand what it means to have that freedom … it was just everything to her.
That’s how she and John end up with some kind of compassion for each other. It was great working with John. It was very real. The house that we shot in, I walked in, and this felt so much like my life. I had a very strong father and John playing this role I really related to. I walked into the house that was supposed to be our house and the bedroom had the wallpaper that I had when I was nine. The same wallpaper. I didn’t say anything to anyone. Herb was like, “Yeah, this is your room. What’s the matter?” He was saying, “What’s wrong?” I said, “No, it’s perfect.”
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