Lakeville teenager navigates Hollywood

Aspiring teenage actress Vanessa Johnston drove west from Lakeville last March, heading for Los Angeles to chase her Hollywood dreams.

Nine months later, the Lakeville South High grad is meeting movie stars, learning the ropes of acting and driving her black sports car through lots of traffic, but no snow. She appeared as Tara in an October episode of the CBS television series "How I Met Your Mother."

"I was Neil Patrick's love interest," Johnston said. "I was the hottest girl in high school."

She also was a semifinalist with 32 other women (chosen from several thousand) and appeared this fall in cycle 15 of America's Next Top Model.

Johnston, who turned 19 in October, got a nudge in the entertainment direction while a junior at Lakeville South High School. She was a top student who did well on the debate team, and had a pretty good Plan A: go to college and law school, then follow her father into law and real estate.

But then her dad suggested she enter a teen beauty pageant. She did, and she was crowned Miss Minnesota Teen USA in November 2009. Plan A went on the shelf.

"It was her first time in a pageant. I said go for it," said her father, Mitch Johnston. "She loves Hollywood. I don't think she will ever be an attorney."

Johnston graduated a semester early, in January 2010, from Lakeville South, where she was in Jay Scovil's writing class. "She was a good writer," Scovil said. "She was in debate, had a strong vocabulary and the ability to string her words into fluent sentences. She was quite persuasive."

She also was very goal oriented, and she researched possible real estate job options, Scovil said. But the beauty pageant victory "opened her to another world, and she decided to move in a different direction," he said.

Sherry Johnston talked her daughter into entering a modeling contest in Los Angeles last January. She placed second, which "put me on the map," Vanessa said.

The Miss Minnesota Teen crown came with a partial scholarship to Donald Trump's New York Film Academy, also in L.A. Johnston drove to Tinseltown in March, attended Trump's acting school at Universal Studios and decided to stay.

"I loved it so much. By the second week, we were filming on a set in the [Universal's] backlot where the movies are made," she said. "I can film 16-hour days, leave at 4:30 a.m. and I still have more energy than when I got there. The intensity on the set makes you feel more alive because it's what you want to do. I told Dad and he said, 'Then that's what you need to do.'"

Dylan Slinger, co-captain of Lakeville South's debate team, said Johnston had a strong work ethic and self-confidence and was always ready to defend her strong opinions.

"She is strong-willed and spirited," Slinger said by phone from the high school. "If you butt heads with her you will get a lively debate." She does well under pressure and will shine in the Hollywood limelight, he said.

Besides her two TV breaks, Johnston has made commercials for Pepsi and Rockstar jeans, and appeared briefly in "CSI Miami" and "The Defenders" (where she met Jim Belushi).

She takes acting lessons and works out daily at the Equinox gym, where she spotted Drew Barrymore.

"We do hip-hop, ballet and yoga," she said. "You have to stay in shape. You never know when they will throw those Daisy Duke shorts on you."

Besides a taste for Hollywood food and nightlife, Johnson has acquired a dingo-huskie dog, Roxy, from the local humane society. She and Roxy share a small apartment in Studio City that came with vaulted ceilings, granite countertops and picture window views of the city and mountains.

She said L.A. has valet parking everywhere, even when she drives her black Maserati to a coffee shop or the gym. Although she misses Minnesota's walleye fishing and lack of traffic, Johnston said she doesn't miss the snow.

She takes Roxy to the dog park sitting under the big Hollywood neon sign on the hills overlooking the city, mud slides permitting. She's seen a few celebrities, though the big stars hire someone to walk their dogs, she said.

Johnston said her parents help with her rent and acting classes so she can focus on auditions and acting and not part-time jobs. Johnston has learned that while your looks may get you an audition, having fun and getting along with set actors and producers is essential.

"Actors create relationships instantaneously," she said. "The difference between actors who make it or don't is that those who make it have really good relationships because this business is a team effort."

She said she was the only woman playing football during breaks with the guys on CSI Miami. "They kept asking me back for three days," she said, although she only played a brief, non-speaking role: she got out of a car at a party and gave a dirty look to her rival, the victim's girlfriend.

Johnston said she's also learning that "to be a good actor you need to know yourself inside out, and know where you are emotionally and intellectually at any moment. It makes you grow a lot as a person and mature fast."

She said she hopes to do more movies and is talking to a sci-fi movie director about a big role. She said after talking about her love of acting with director Stevie Long, he replied: "If you find what you love to do, you will never work another day in your life."

Jim Adams • 952-707-9996