But Johnson, 28, says she still feels her mother's presence and credits her with every success. Most recently, Johnson nabbed the starring role in Sweetwater: A True Rock Story. The TV movie, which premieres Aug. 15 on VH1, focuses on the first band to play at Woodstock in 1969. Johnson got to play lead singer Nansi Nevins without auditioning. "I was like, 'Thanks, Mom,' " she says. "She's my guardian angel. It seems the things I dreamed about are coming true since my mom passed away." As it happens, Nevins's mother had also died of cancer, and conveying the singer's grief left Johnson drained. She had also just broken up with her boyfriend of six months. "I was a mess," says Johnson. "It was the most challenging part I've ever played."
Except for the singing. The petite Johnson, who packs a big, Grace Slick-like contralto, plays guitar, performing folk tunes around L.A. She even has a song, "Puddle of Grace," which she wrote for her mother, on the Felicity soundtrack album. "I just love to do it," she says of her music.
As a child growing up in Dennis, Johnson craved attention. She and her sister Julie Clary, now 32 and a legal assistant, would put on shows for friends and family, including their father, Greig, now 58, and brother Greig Jr., 33, like his dad a car salesman.
Johnson took up gymnastics at 7 and competed worldwide, obtaining Class One (just below Olympic caliber) status at age 11. But when she was 12 she broke her elbow in a fall from the uneven bars. Ensuing arm injuries made her quit at age 16. After graduating from high school, Johnson headed for New York City, where she studied acting at the American Musical and Dramatic Academy and the famed Lee Strasberg Institute.
But it was her gymnastics skills—not her acting—that won Johnson, then 21, the part of Power Ranger Kimberly in 1993. It was hardly the debut she'd dreamed about. "I'd walk down the street and people would say, 'Oh, it's the Pink Power Ranger.' I'd be embarrassed," she says. Still, she wasn't above donning the pink outfit for a niece's preschool class. Or greeting adoring Power Ranger fans. "They almost lei'ed me to death," she recalls of ardent admirers at an airport in Hawaii.
Today, Johnson says, she relishes the "peacefulness" of the suburban L.A. cottage she shares with her bulldog Lucy and cats Stella and Picklenna. She keeps a video journal of her musings. This sense of calm is new to her. "I remember Amy Jo when she would freak out about the smallest thing," observes her friend Gwendolyn Sanford, 24, a musician. Johnson adds that she used to obsess about leaving her mark—or "echo"—on the world. "Since my mom died, I know there's life after death," she says. "I don't need to make myself echo when I die, because you echo around the people you love anyway."
Sophfronia Scott Gregory
Kelly Carter in Los Angeles
- Contributors:
- Kelly Carter.
Saved by the Bell Reunion
The hookups, the meltdowns, the memoires
The case reveals what was really going on what they think of each other now!
