The Globe and Mail - November 3, 1987

"Follows has feet on the ground and 'plan' for success"
Adele Freedman

Anne of Green Gables has been good to Megan Follows . Since starring in the four-hour mini-series based on L. M. Montgomery's adolescent classic, the 19-year-old actress has been in demand. Los Angeles producer Martin Rosen (Women In Love, Smooth Talk) saw Anne and thought of Follows when he was casting the feature film, Stacking, which opens in Toronto Nov. 13. Follows plays Anna Mae Morgan, a 14-year-old girl of fifties vintage who takes it upon herself to repair the stacker that has crushed her dad's arm and her mom's dreams, thus saving the family ranch from failure and herself from innocence. In person, Follows is saved from innocence by a knowing eye, a throaty voice and a habit of trying out different hairstyles as she speaks: swept- up, pulled back, curled lazily behind the ears, one lobe at a time, and over-the-shoulder, one blade at a time. In fact, Follows' cornsilk tresses are oddly more articulate than her conversation, which is less reminiscent of the gabled Anne than her reliably upbeat cousin, Pollyanna. Of Stacking, Follows says, for example: "That and Anne are the best experiences I've had. It was great working with Frederic Forrest and Christine Lahti. Montana, where the film was shot, was beautiful. It was just a great experience."

Anna Mae Morgan, her character, happens to be 14 - "but a very different kind of 14-year-old," according to Follows. "There are a lot of colors to her. She's an introvert. She only lets certain people see certain things." The same could possibly be true of Follows, who, in any case, has moved to another of her recent experiences, that of starring in the Disney Channel's Anne of Avonlea: The Continuing Story of Anne of Green Gables, a sequel which will be shown on PBS in February. She's "happy about it, happy with what we did with it," she says, characteristically. What really fascinated her was reading Lucy Maud Montgomery's diaries and "making connections between Lucy and Anne. A lot of Lucy is revealed through Anne, a lot of reluctance to feel her femininity and get married. The women characters come in, you can see they're like Lucy. Her women characters are so interesting; her men aren't so dimensional."

Anne of Green Gables also begat Follows' performance in ABC's forthcoming Seasonal Differences, a real-life drama in which she plays a Jewish high school student, and an as-yet-unreleased film called Destiny, starring William Hurt and Timothy Hutton, with Follows in a supporting role. "It's very intense," says Follows of Destiny, adding that Stacking, Anne of Avonlea and Destiny were all filmed within five months, an experience she refers to alternately as ''not normal," ''very special" and, simply, ''crazy."

Follows recently graduated from high school in Los Angeles and wound up a 4 1/2-year residency there. She's in the process of moving to New York with her boy friend, who's "in the industry." She'll soon be starting work on an NBC remake of Inherit the Wind, with Kirk Douglas and Jason Robards.

"I'm not a big one for remakes," she says, but she - and doubtless NBC - are prepared to make allowances for this one: "The prayer issue, the mixing of church and state, couldn't be more appropriate today."

New York, she says with her zest for the obvious, is a tough city to tackle. But she has family there, a brother studying at Juilliard and a sister, Samantha, who is an actress.

Come January, however, Follows is looking forward to a family reunion in Toronto. She'll be rehearsing her first stage play, a Young People's Theatre production of The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-In-The-Moon Marigolds. The cast will include her mother, Dawn Greenhalgh, and sister, Samantha. ''This'll be an interesting one, a real treat, an experience I'll never forget," she says, grinning, and not just for the obvious reason. Having exclusively worked on films and television dramas to date, ''the process of going from beginning to end in one night will be amazing." She's also hoping the stage exposure will lead to a theatre part in New York, and she wants to do more film, and some day to direct - and write - scripts. She loves foreign films, her current favorites being Wish You Were Here, The Good Father and Withnail and I. She'd love to have four or five kids, too, but she'd "hate to be their mother."

Meanwhile, in New York, she intends ''to do some work and develop my craft." In the category of work, she places voice lessons, movement lessons - and maybe gymnastics, ballet and skating, all of which she studied as a child. ''Just take care of myself is what I'd really like to do," she says. ''It's so exciting in the beginning, such an extreme between rejection and praise, so addicting." She counts herself lucky her parents are both actors but ''not huge stars - performers who put the work in." She's sure she's got her feet on the ground. Both by upbringing and observation, she ''can't stand shallow actors. There's nothing worse. People are only as good as their work and their experiences." Count on Follows to get a lot more of each. You see, she's got "a plan, a bit of a plan." She's just not saying what it is.

Source: The Globe and Mail