What ever happened to Square Pegs co-star, Amy Linker?
That’s what our good friend Kristi suggested we take a look at for today’s “Words For Your Enjoyment.” And you’ve got to figure, when a good friend of WFME suggests a Friday topic, it’s got to be damn good.
And it is.
Amy Linker (top left in above picture, next to Sarah Jessica Parker) played Lauren Hutchinson, a brace-wearing, chubby sidekick to Parker’s character of Patty. She was, if you can believe this, not really fat or in need of braces whatsoever. The braces and the padding were all fake (an 80’s version of CGI)! She was, for all intents and purposes, a true teenage fake. (And a damn good actress.)
But these days, where has little old Amy Linker gone and why would she give up such a promising acting career to take a job as an Elementary School Teacher in Santa Monica, California?
She got sick of the drama.
Amy wasn’t so pleased with the kinds of roles she was offered after Square Pegs did it’s run. She was offered other fatty teenager sidekick roles that never really caused her acting chops to salivate. Sure, there was the periodic “I’ve just hit puberty” afterschool special and the requisite “I’m being teased by the popular girls” Sunday night network movie… But Amy didn’t want to play a part in any of it. She wanted to be a positive role model for other young women who were looking to television for the answers.
That’s right, I’ll say it again for emphasis: Amy didn’t want a part of it.
And so, what did our friend Amy do? She set out to teach. To go after a profession where she could honestly give something back to the children of the world. Where she could shed the padding and rip off the plastic/metal-spray painted braces and smile brightly and confidently. Where she could mold young impressionable minds and show them that no matter what they looked like on the outside, they would eventually be able to outgrow such teasable features with the help of the gym and Extreme Makeover on ABC.
And finally, in the year 2000, Amy Linker was happy.
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To this day, Amy and her family live in Santa Monica, California where they enjoy the surf and the sun and the beach and the boardwalk with their famous little acting dog, Tutu. Tutu’s claim to fame is the Alpo commercial where the dog chases the mini-animated chuck wagon across the kitchen floor.
As for Sarah Jessica Parker, she currently is out of work and her movie career has hit a brick wall as a result of contract negotiations with one of her old television co-stars. Parker, it seems, has decided to throw her entire career away by becoming the spokesperson for a company (The Gap) that strangely, makes clothing reminiscent of the styles she used to wear on an old show called Square Pegs…
If you ask me, Amy Linker was the smarter one.
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