Her Bomont High days are long behind her, but Lori Singer is still stunning at 59! After a whirlwind decade, Singer stepped back from the spotlight for 20 years -- until she made her return in 2011 with a guest-starring role on Law & Order: SVU! Most recently, she starred in 2016's "God Knows Where I Am."
What happened to the girl that played Ariel on Footloose?
Lori Singer (Ariel Moore)
She hasn't had a huge number of roles over the past few years, appearing in Law and Order: Special Victims Unit, as well as films Experimenter and The Institute.
Valerie Bertinelli nearly landed the role of Kevin Bacon's love interest, Ariel, in the 1984 movie Footloose, but there was one problem. The 57-year-old actress appeared on Wednesday's Watch What Happens Live With Andy Cohen and revealed that she went out for the leading lady role in the beloved dance film.
Hough is 23 and plays an 18-year-old as if she were in her early 30s, bringing in notes of gravity, weariness, despairing recklessness and even self-disgust.
FOOTLOOSE (1984) What Happened To The Cast After 38 Years?! (Then And Now 2023)
How did Ariel get a black eye in Footloose?
Ariel's breakup with Chuck turns vicious when she goes after his truck with a crowbar—and he goes after her face with his fists. The attack leaves her lying on the ground with a huge black eye.
The primary events of the film take place over the span of a few days, and I assume that the ruined Eric/”Vanessa” wedding was immediately repurposed to Eric and Ariel's, so she was at most 17 when she married Eric (if she had a birthday during that time and we didn't see it), but more likely still 16.
John Travolta reportedly also turned down the role of Ren McCormack. Christopher Atkins (The Blue Lagoon) says he was already cast in the role but scared off producers and director Herbert Ross when he showed up to the initial meeting high.
In a 2013 interview with Howard Stern, Kevin Bacon admitted that he has actually tipped DJs at weddings not to play "Footloose". He stated that people expect him to dance to the song as he did in the movie. In truth, while he did do some of the dancing, there was also a dancing double for him.
Is it still illegal to dance in Elmore City Oklahoma?
Historic bans
From the 1830s to 1950s, play parties became popular as a means to circumvent restrictions on dancing. The events of the 1984 film Footloose were inspired by a dancing ban in the heavily Southern Baptist town of Elmore City, Oklahoma, which lasted until 1980.
Tom Cruise and Rob Lowe were both slated to play the lead. The casting directors were impressed with Cruise because of the famous underwear dance sequence in Risky Business, but he was unavailable for the part because he was filming All the Right Moves.
Why was Sarah Jessica Parker not in the dance scene of Footloose?
Bacon continued: “The studio tested the movie, and they were like, 'This doesn't work at all; everyone wants to get up and dance at the end of this movie. '” The actor revealed that it was almost a year before the cast got back together to reshoot the scene, which might explain the absence of Sarah Jessica Parker.
But because the plot of Footloose revolves around dance, the lack of music in this case is especially glaring. Kevin Bacon did most of his own dancing, but some moves were too difficult for him. A double was brought in for the more serious gymnastics stunts—a fact the studio wanted to hide from the press.
His sternness originates from his own personal fear for his family. After a tragic car accident three years before Ren moved to the town, five high school seniors were killed on their way home from a party where they were drinking and dancing. Of the five teenagers, Bobby Moore, the son of Shaw Moore was amongst them.
How much did Kevin Bacon make for Footloose? It has been reported that Kevin Bacon was paid as much as $1 million for Footloose. This amount may be surprising considering the fact that this was Bacon's first major headlining movie role and that this is a large number for 1984.
After the startling revelation that husband and wife Kevin Bacon and Kyra Sedgwick are distantly related as cousins, comes a brand new detail about what they share – again, courtesy of the show on genealogy, PBS's Finding Your Roots.
However, Footloose primarily was shot in Utah, and used the state's Payson High School for many high school scenes. A 2011 article from Utah's Deseret News indicates Bacon went to Payson to "sit in on a few classes" for the film.
But the thing: the 2011 version of Footloose manages a trick balancing act of being essentially the exact same movie as the original, while producing actual underlying themes. It's a superior movie to the original, while still using 90% of the same scenes and dialogue.
The decision to fix Ariel's age at 16 years old was also likely to appeal to the target audience of Disney's version of The Little Mermaid. Her age makes sense to the narrative of the story as it's driven by her curiosity about the world and her identity crisis; relatable themes for many at the same stage of life.
The movie itself does not explicitly state Ariel's age, but Disney's production notes for the film shared by Yahoo! describe the lead character as a "spirited 18-year-old." The evidence behind Ariel being aged up two years compared to the animated movie can be seen in the live-action remake.
