THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, September 4, 1995 TAG: 9509020057
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: By Larry Bonko, Television columnist
LENGTH: Long : 189 lines
EVER WONDER what your TV favorites were like in high school? Could they possibly have been as dorky as you? Or as cool?
Do you think Jason Priestley in high school was anything like Brandon Walsh, the straight-arrow, big man on campus he plays on ``Beverly Hills 90210''?
Was Tiffani-Amber Thiessen similar to her relentlessly cute and goody-goody cheerleader character on ``Saved by the Bell''? Was the real Joey Lawrence like the dim-as-a-15-watt-bulb high school kid he played for years on ``Blossom''? Or did he even attend high school?
Wonder no longer, couch potatoes of America.
Your humble columnist is here to lay bare the pasts of some of the people you see every week on the tube.
Who was cool? Who wasn't? Who were the nerds and the geeks? The class clowns? The popular kids?
I have the answers right here as the result of a survey of TV personalities conducted between bites of hors d'oeuvres at Hollywood parties during the recent Television Critics Association semi-annual press tour.
Do you readers who graduated from Lake Taylor High in 1972 remember a classmate named Stephen Furst? He is one of the busiest actors in television with parts in three series.
Furst says he was a stagestruck kid back in the 1970s. When he should have been doing homework, he was hanging out at a dinner theater. Now his secret is out.
Here, from their mouths to your eyes, are the high school report cards of some of the brightest lights on TV:
Melissa Gilbert, who appeared on ``Little House on the Prairie'' for nine seasons including her teen years, and will soon co-star in a NBC film, ``Danielle Steel's Zoya'': ``I was a complete geek in high school. A famous complete geek. Nobody in school liked me. I got the impression the other kids were afraid of me or something because I was in a successful TV series.''
Jason Priestley, soon to begin his sixth season as Brandon Walsh on Fox's ``Beverly Hills 90210'': ``I was an honor roll student and one of the bad guys in school at the same time. I often ended up on the wrong side of the law. But I figured that as long as I made the honor roll, I could get away with almost anything.''
Doug Savant, who plays Matt Fielding on ``Melrose Place'' on Fox: ``I was a jerk in every sense of the word.''
Comic Richard Belzer, who is featured in the ensemble NBC drama, ``Homicide: Life on the Street'': ``I went to five different high schools, and was thrown out of all of them. I was a class clown who did just enough work to get by, never living up to my potential. I played guard on the basketball team. I never passed to my teammates.''
Swoozie Kurtz of ``Sisters'' on NBC: ``I was a very boring A student at North Hollywood High. The drama teacher there lit a fire under me. He's the reason I'm an actress today.''
Daphne Zuniga of ``Melrose Place'': ``If you could look back and see me in high school, you'd see a tomboy/drama geek.''
Stephen Furst, appearing in the syndicated ``Babylon 5,'' as well as a series of ``Sunny Skies'' specials with Howie Mandel on Showtime, and soon to co-star in the Fox sitcom, ``Misery Loves Company'': ``I think of myself as being a class clown, a good kid in high school who spent a lot of time after school working with director Mark Thomas at the old Cavalier Dinner Theater in Norfolk. I preferred appearing in `Fiddler on the Roof' to doing my homework. Maybe that's why I finished high school with a 1.7 grade average.''
Ed O'Neill of ``Married. . . With Children'' on Fox: ``A jock. A fair student. An average kid. That was me in high school. Back then I never even thought of making a living on television. I thought I'd be a professional football player.''
Katey Sagal, who co-stars with O'Neill on ``Married . . . With Children'': ``When I was in high school, I was in a rock band. I sang. I was into the blues, too. In class, I didn't apply myself as much as I should have. I liked English class. I loved to write essays. But I loved music more.''
Jennifer Aniston, one of six in the ensemble cast of ``Friends'' on NBC, the No.1-rated network show this summer: ``In high school, I was this very round, very chubby little Greek girl. I was about 30 pounds heavier than I am now, and all that weight was in my hips. A few years ago, when I started exercising, which I never did before then, the 30 pounds went away.''
Matt LeBlanc, one of three men who share star billing with Aniston on ``Friends'': ``In a vocational high school in Newton, Mass., I was somewhat of a jock, somewhat of an academic, somewhat of a character.''
Jessica Lange, Academy Award winner who will co-star with John Goodman and Alec Baldwin in a CBS presentation of ``A Streetcar Named Desire'': ``I was a wild kid.'' Co-star Baldwin: ``In high school, I was into everything and into nothing at the same time.''
Mariel Hemingway, kin to author Ernest Hemingway and co-star of the new CBS series ``Central Park West'': ``Because of my last name, I felt a tremendous amount of pressure to be better than everyone else in high school. Whenever I'd turn in a paper, I'd hear the same thing from teachers, which was that I had a great deal of promise, but. . . while all of this was going on, I felt terribly insecure because I was very tall, gangly and kind of awkward-looking.''
Marilu Henner, who will soon appear in the NBC movie ``Fight for Justice: The Nancy Conn Story'': ``I was an overachiever to the point of being obnoxious at an all-girls Catholic school where we all wore uniforms, the skirts and things that all men fantasize about.''
John Lithgow, who is also in the cast of ``Third Rock from the Sun'': ``I was always the new kid in school because my family moved around a lot. My father was a producer and director in regional theater in Ohio, Massachusetts and New Jersey. I became good at assimilating quickly. Before long at every new school I attended, I was running the student council.''
Harry Anderson of the CBS sitcom ``Dave's World'': ``I was a very independent 16-year-old. I started doing magic on street corners when I was in high school so that I didn't have to mooch money off my parents. I studied only what I needed to know. But I did graduate from North Hollywood High in 1969. School is a great opportunity. Don't miss out on it.''
Patrick Duffy, co-star of the ABC sitcom ``Step by Step'': ``When it came to dates, I was turned down by every good-looking girl in my high school in Everett, Wash. I was a pretty normal kid who wanted to be a jock but wasn't the caliber of athlete who could make a high school team in Washington state, where they are serious about football. I thought I'd be an architect one day.''
Fran Drescher of ``The Nanny'' on CBS: ``I had it together in high school since the time I was 15. I was one of those girls who was pretty and wore trendy clothes. I was just as happy hanging out with the nerds as the really cool kids because the really cool kids were not into the theater cliques.''
Mandy Patinkin of ``Chicago Hope'' on CBS: ``I was not a brilliant student, and in fact did not enjoy going to high school until I found a youth center near the school where they put on plays. I practically lived there. When I did badly in school, my parents threatened to take me out of the plays at the youth center. I protested, but eventually I studied enough to graduate.''
Stand-up comic Jeff Foxworthy, who has been signed by ABC to star in a sitcom this fall: ``In high school, they voted me most likely to be in a police lineup. I was a nerd. When I was performing in Atlanta recently, the man who was my high school principal was in the audience. He sent me a note in which he said he couldn't believe he was paying $20 to see me do the same stuff I did for free in high school.''
Stand-up comic Drew Carey, who, like Foxworthy, will star in an ABC sitcom this fall: ``All my friends were funny. I wasn't even the funniest guy in that group. When I was in high school, I was amongst the class clowns, but not the class clown. I wanted to be a jock but ended up being frustrated because I was a lousy wrestler. In high school, I made a list of things I wanted for myself when I got older. One was my own sitcom.''
Jane Seymour, who stars in ``Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman'' on CBS: ``High school for me meant studying at a school for ballerinas, and on my time off, volunteering as an auxiliary nurse for my father who was a doctor. I still have the clothes I wore in school back then when my hair was very long and straight. My eldest daughter is taken with the look I wore when I was in school. Instead of revolting against her mother's image, she has taken to it. She says my school clothes are hip.''
Cynthia Stevenson of the NBC sitcom ``Hope & Gloria'': ``In high school I was bone-thin. Like now. I was obsessive about everything. I was really into sports. And I did fall into a clique with some bad girls. We dared to smoke in the school bathrooms.''
Speaking of chilling out in school bathrooms. . .
LL Cool J or James Todd Smith, the rap artist who stars in the NBC sitcom ``In the House'': ``Let's say I was dangerous in high school. I was into football and I was a cool guy who was hanging around the bathrooms with the other cool guys. After my records came out, I was gone from high school. I took to the road with a tutor. I never had a senior year in high school.''
Joey Lawrence, late of ``Blossom,'' who will star with his two brothers in the NBC sitcom ``Brotherly Love'': ``When I was on `Blossom,' I was enrolled in a strict high school in Pennsylvania that required me to send work back there promptly. From the ninth grade on, that is how I got my schooling. I did go back to Philly to graduate with my class and the kids I knew from grade school.''
It was the same story with Thiessen. She was just another Long Beach, Calif., school kid until her ninth grade when she landed the role on ``Saved by the Bell,'' and began studying with tutors.
That was fine with this actress who has embarked on career No. 2 as the bitch with a heart of marshmallow on ``Beverly Hills 90210,'' Valerie Malone. She recalls, ``In junior high, which I attended for only a semester, I definitely was not in the `in' category. I was the loner. The kids there seemed to put kids like me who worked in TV and films into the category of outsiders.''
Thiessen heeded her tutors well. She graduated valedictorian at Valley Professional High.
She will soon be appearing in a NBC film, ``Scared by Love,'' with her live-in love, Brian Austin Green, also a regular on ``Beverly Hills 90210.'' They share their home with two golden retrievers.
And what was high school like for him?
``No problems,'' said Green except for the time he appeared in a commercial for the cereal Corn Pops. ``I caught a lot of flack about getting my daily dose of Corn Pops. . . . ''
So tell us, Lake Taylor Class of 1972, what was Stephen Furst really like in high school? ILLUSTRATION: Color photos
Jason Priestly
Fran Drescher
Katey Sagal
Harry Anderson
by CNB