If a movie were to be made about Lynn-Holly Johnson's life, a tagline could be, "Seek Adventure."
How many people can say they've kissed Robby Benson, cracked jokes with Roger Moore, stood in Bette Davis's presence, married George Clooney and then died a week later, and due to personal integrity, turned down films that would become big hits?
Johnson can.
At 19, Johnson was happily skating for the Ice Capades. Producers for
Ice Castles, which was being cast, tracked her down, and she completed a successful screen test. The part was hers if she wanted it. Producer Donald Wrye had championed her to the executives at Columbia, touting her modeling, acting and skating experience. The icing on the cake — Johnson, as a child actor, had played Helen Keller in
The Miracle Worker, so acting as a visually impaired person wouldn't be daunting for her.
It should have been off to the races! But not so fast. Johnson was happy with her touring life. The script contained a huge stumbling block for her, a nude love scene. She told her Ice Capades roommates, Kitty and Heidi DeLio, that she was going to decline. "No way!" Kitty said. She told Johnson to go downstairs to the Columbus, Ohio, Ramada Inn pay phone and accept — with the provision that the nude scene would be deleted. It was.
However, when they got halfway into the actual filming, a substituted scene had Johnson taking off her blouse. Again, she vetoed this. The director refused to speak to her. Production was shut down for two days. Who won this round? Johnson. The scene was rewritten.
When asked about what it was like to work with Benson, the "It Guy" of the 1970s, Johnson said that as a serious competitor skating six to seven hours a day, going into the movie, she didn't know a lot about him. However, Benson's determination to master enough hockey to look like a serious competitor impressed her; she also appreciated that he didn't look down on her for having no previous acting experience.
In one of the movie's key scenes, Lexie Winston (played by Johnson) has a life-changing accident. The character was tired of people wanting something from her, telling her what to do, and keeping her from training hard. Stroking hard, her feet on fire, the adrenaline rush caused her to trip, hitting her head hard. But Johnson quickly corrects the notion that Winston is completely blind — she can see shadows and light.
For her to be convincing to the film's viewers, Johnson unfocused her eyes, causing them to be blurry. "I made it scary for myself," she said. The resulting feelings of not being able to compete temporarily hit home, too. In 1974, a hipbone socket injury had sidelined Johnson.
A movie that originally was slated to be R-rated came out instead as a family movie. Johnson takes great satisfaction in knowing that she stood her ground.
A now-recognizable face after
Ice Castles, producers sought her out. Again, she stood her ground if nudity was involved, saying no to cult classics like
Caddyshack and Francis Ford Coppola's film
The Cotton Club.
However, she did become Moore's Bond girl in
For Your Eyes Only, shared the screen with Bette Davis in the Disney film
The Watcher in the Woods, and hung out with the likes of Dustin Hoffman, Stephen Spielberg and John Denver; she even got to meet Princess Diana.
But, when asked about her time in Hollywood, Johnson ruefully says, "I made it out alive." Once again, Johnson made a stand to stay away from the ever-present drug culture and to show integrity in a world of lies and deceit. Whatever the character was, Johnson became the person, taking the part as seriously as she would any competition. She was always willing to put in the hard work.
During down time in filming in the Philippines, she learned Japanese. She took long walks in Spain — whatever she could do to enhance her life of adventure.
Eventually she tired of the crazy stuff, the game-playing and the outrageous, often unsafe, filming locations, deciding to close this chapter of her life. Like Winston, she desired to walk away from all the Hollywood hype and be her own person.
That meant falling in love, marrying Kelly Givens, and raising two children, Kellen and Jensie. Much of her time now is spent traveling to her children's gymnastics and track competitions.
Though blessed with beauty and athletic ability, Johnson knows the hard road from recovery all too well. Along with her 1974 injury, Johnson suffered a stroke in her 50s due to an undiagnosed hole in heart while traveling on a plane. Taken by her husband to the emergency room, she endured a successful heart surgery; the surgery closed the hole in her heart, but it was followed by a year of intense cognitive therapy to restore linear thinking lost in the stroke.
She urges all people with a family history of heart issues to have a thorough heart exam and tell doctors everything there is to know about them.
Understanding injuries well, Johnson was on hand recently at the University of Alabama to support Jensie, as she had surgery to correct a gymnastics injury. And in January, while skating in Sun Valley, Idaho, Johnson fell and broke her arm, which now contains a plate and screws — a permanent injury. Remind you of any movie scenes from the 1970s? The silver lining for Johnson is that she doesn't set off airport security with her new metal.
Life is an adventure to Johnson; she has lived hers well.
