Lori Singer Discusses Her Role as Ariel Moore for the 40th Anniversary of ‘Footloose’

Celebrating its 40th anniversary in 2024, the beloved classic Footloose arrives for the first time on 4K Ultra HD™ February 13th from Paramount Home Entertainment.

Originally released on February 17th, 1984, Footloose thrilled audiences with its spirited dancing, electrifying soundtrack, and inspiring story. Kevin Bacon gives a star-making performance as a city boy whose rebellious love for music and dancing shakes up a small town.

Directed by Herbert Ross and written by composer and writer Dean Pitchford, Footloose was a massive success, earning 80 million dollars at the domestic box office. The film features an exceptional supporting cast, including Lori Singer, Dianne Wiest, John Lithgow, Sarah Jessica Parker, and Chris Penn, along with a sensational soundtrack featuring Kenny Loggins, Shalamar, Deniece Williams, Bonnie Tyler, Quiet Riot, John Mellencamp, Foreigner, and more. Both “Footloose” and “Let’s Hear It for the Boy” were nominated for the Academy Award® for ‘Best Music, Original Song.’

For anyone new to Footloose, the film centers around city boy Ren McCormick (Kevin Bacon), newly relocated to an uptight small town where dancing has been banned. Ren quickly makes a new best friend in Willard (Chris Penn). He falls fast for the minister’s daughter (Lori Singer), but his love for music and dancing gets him into hot water equally as fast. After the huge success of Herb Ross’ “Footloose,” Singer went on to act in such films as Robert Altman’s Short Cuts, John Schlesinger’s The Falcon and the Snowman, Warlock, The Man with One Red Shoe, Alan Rudolph’s Trouble in Mind, and Equinox, to name a few.

Newly remastered, Footloose will be available in a two-disc 4K Ultra HD/Blu-ray™ set or a collectible SteelBook™ with artwork designed to look like an 80s Walkman. The Blu-ray includes the legacy bonus content detailed below:

• Commentary by Craig Zadan and Dean Pitchford
• Commentary by Kevin Bacon
• Let’s Dance! Kevin Bacon on Footloose
• From Bomont to the Big Apple: An Interview with Sarah Jessica Parker
• Remembering Willard
• Kevin Bacon’s Screen Test
• Kevin Bacon Costume Montage
• Footloose: A Modern Musical – Part 1
• Footloose: A Modern Musical – Part 2
• Footloose: Songs That Tell A Story
• Theatrical Trailer

We thank Lori Singer for taking the time last week to field a few questions for V13 via Zoom. The audio (via SoundCloud) and video are available here if you’d prefer to hear Lori’s answers in real time.

It’s hard to believe it’s been 40 years for Footloose.

Lori Singer: “Yes.”

Were you cast early in the process of putting that film together? Do you remember?

“Yeah, I think so. I mean, it’s a casting process. But yeah, it wasn’t going in and then they dropped me in there. They didn’t parachute me in.”

Did your inclusion in the TV show Fame help bolster you into the role that you got in Footloose?

“Well, in Fame, I was actually a very sweet character and a very rather shy character, and so I had done maybe 40 episodes of Fame and I’d done also a TV film called Born Beautiful, where I played a very tough New Jersey kid that was trying to be a model and trying to break in and was a little bit uncivilized. And so I think that the dance training that I had from my life always is a help. They wanted someone who could dance. I think that helped. I could sing obviously a little bit.

“But Footloose, I think more that my life experience is what helped me most with Footloose. My training as an actor and my training just as a person going to school in various locations, growing up in Texas part of my life, and actually having a lot of those kind of experiences where I was a daredevil and a rebel. I think there’s nothing like that. There’s nothing more real than the organic realism of having lived a little bit on the wild side, I think. And they said, Herb (Ross) said, ‘No one’s done anything like that.’ Every time I came in, I think I put them out a little bit; I got their heads spinned a little bit.”

Memory can be a funny thing. So when you reflect back on the movie, what are the things that pop into your head? What are the memories that you smile about?

“Wow. Well, that it’s just an American classic rebel film and me being a female at that. I guess I didn’t think about it that much. I just lived it. I lived the rebellion and thought about it from her perspective all the time because it just felt real. It felt like Kevin and I had lived a portion of our life that way.

“But when I look at it now, which is what you’re asking, I would say that I’m taken by how at every turn she’s rebellious. From the moment in church, the first time you see her to the moment she meets him, she’s not very warm. She’s not like most kids would be maybe a little nicer to someone’s coming to the town and then right away she goes from the car to a truck to her boyfriend to then dancing to right away. Then it just gets wilder and wilder, and that’s what I’m taken by – standing in front of a train.

“Just so many stunts that are absolutely physically dangerous and exhibit the freedom of land. When you live out in an area where there’s a lot of land; the tractor race, the chicken race on tractors, there’s a different feeling. It’s a different feeling of challenging your physicality; trying to challenge yourself.”

You had so many scenes with Diane Weist and John Lithgow.

“Yes.”

It must’ve almost been like just being in an acting workshop – a paid acting workshop for your scenes with them?

“Being with John and Diane was like being home. They took their roles very seriously. It was just like being their kid. We were very close. We had many, quite a few scenes together, sporadically placed. We were all on set the entire time. I think people had to leave every now and then to do something extra, but mostly we were all there. I mean, I was always there. Kevin was always there, Chris, Sarah, we were always there, but Diane was always there. John had to go a couple of times, a couple of days, but basically they just felt like they were my parents.

“And I just mentioned this, but when I went to the house that Herb picked out and said okay, Lori, this is you and John’s and Diane’s house, and we would all go into the house, sit there. I spent time in that house. Then once I knew where we were and I went into the bedroom and there was the exact wallpaper that had actually been in my actual bedroom, so it was when I was a kid. So it just felt like many connections that were extremely real. And John was a very powerful father figure. And my father had been a very powerful father figure, and we’d been photographed whenever we moved from town to town because he was a conductor. So we were under scrutiny all the time, and I was a little hard to control sometimes.

“So John behaving that way to me. I think Herb liked the way I stood up to him. I wasn’t whining at him, I wasn’t begging him. I was just like straight up, just a rebel. And I think that was unusual for a girl, young girl to show to be a rebel like that and be able to use her smarts to help with the new guy in town, to be the catalyst for change. Because they saw him as an intruder and she saw him as a catalyst. There’s my chance, she’s always thinking how to get this town to change and to be free and freer and to dance and to live basically.”

At any point while you and Kevin, Chris and Sarah were on set, did you commiserate and say, “We’re making a hit. This movie is going to do really well?”

“Commiserate. That’s funny. Wow. That’s a nice thought. Actually. No, I was just so into the work. I was so into being her that I don’t think she would’ve ever thought about that kind of a future. The future to her was about freedom and what’s next, and would they ever understand what was happening in this town. That really was permeating. I know it sounds a little crazy, but honestly, that’s what I was thinking about.

“And when I was with Kevin, it was just about our energy, trying to keep enough distance between, you know what I mean? Trying to be respectful, but acknowledge that there was some chemistry. It was, you’re dealing with a lot and trying to be true to the confines of this small town, and it’s a lot. I mean, we were dealing with a lot, I wouldn’t say, but that’s why I think it went into the film. That’s why I think it resonates. That’s what the audience actually saw, because Ric Waite, the cinematographer and Herb actually could capture that, what we were feeling.

“Maybe some of the others were thinking about that. I don’t know, I can tell you I wasn’t. I was just, if they were talking about anything that I didn’t particularly I wasn’t thinking about or something, I would listen, but I would take it in as Ariel. I mean, I tried to step into that role, really, and it was fun. It was a great role to play the Rebel, and they were fantastic. Kevin is fantastic and Sarah is wonderful, and Chris Penn just beautiful. We just lived it, honestly, and John and Diane, we just lived it. They were like my parents. They were fantastic.”

Footloose 4K cover image