How could rabid adulation by young females slip his mind? Nine years ago the brown-haired, brown-eyed hunk was known to millions as Joey, not Joseph. Playing sexy dimwit Joey Russo in NBC's hit Blossom, he was an A-list teen dream whose every "Whoa!" (his signature line) made mall maidens keel over. He was deluged with 15,000 fan letters a week and couldn't go for pizza without security guards. "They still go nuts over him," says House costar Kyle Howard. "There's one group of girls who come to the show every week." Says Lawrence: "I was the same age as the character I was playing. So to me it was cool as hell to have thousands of teenage girls screaming my name."
His acting is still age-appropriate. In House Lawrence is twentysomething Kurt Franklin, one of four kids whose parents have moved to Arizona for health reasons and left them in Michigan. The older three must raise the youngest. The best part for Lawrence? "I get to play opposite characters that are a little like Joey—not too smart. I'm not the butt of all the jokes. I feel like I've come full circle."
He insists on being called Joseph for good reason. The Joey thing got started because he played not only Joey Russo, but as a tot, he was Joey Donovan in the '80s Nell Carter sitcom Gimme a Break! "Joseph is my real name," he says. "My friends and family have always called me Joseph or Joe. I said that when I'm an adult, I'm going to use the name I was born with."
Joseph Lawrence Mignogna Jr. grew up in Philadelphia in a bustling family that includes Donna, 51, a former teacher (now a full-time mom to the youngest, Andrew, 15), and Joe, 54, an insurance salesman. Another brother, Matthew, 23, is also an actor (Mrs. Doubtfire). By age 3, Lawrence was lip-synching to Saturday Night Fever, and at 5 asked his parents to take him to commercial auditions. He landed Gimme a Break! at 6.
After Blossom, the actor, who graduated from Philadelphia's Abington Friends School and took courses at USC, took a two-year break to get his bearings. "I had a lot of growing to do," he says, "and I didn't want to do it in the public eye." He returned to TV last fall, playing a TV producer on NBC's '60s-themed American Dreams. Says Lawrence: "I showed people I could do something different."
Around the same time, he met Michelle Vella, now 28, an assistant producer in L.A., at her 27th-birthday party. The pair hit it off, and two months later Lawrence proposed. "I could have waited a little longer," says Vella. "But he's old-fashioned and wanted us to be engaged." Married since August 2002, the pair share a lovingly restored three-bedroom house in L.A., where Lawrence is plotting the future. "I can't wait to be a dad," he says. "It's going to be the best thing ever."
J.D. REED
Ulrica Wihlborg in Los Angeles
- Contributors:
- Ulrica Wihlborg.
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!
