Oregon daily emerald., April 28, 1987, Page 9, Image 21

The cocktail lounge near Univer
sal Studios is noisy with the chat
ter of one group of people who
look like tourists hoping to see a
Face, and another group of people who look
like they’ve just signed such a Face to a
multi-picture deal.
Neither bunch looks particularly like
Daphne Zuniga's crowd, and if you didn’t
know that she was co-starring in Mel
Brooks’ soon-to-be-released comedy Space
balls (as Princess Vespa), you might guess
that she was a college student forced to sit in
this place for a sociology research paper.
Zuniga’s friendly smile is casual but re
served, suggesting a sort of intellectual
preppy who doesn’t open up too easily, as if
she wants you to ask questions but hopes
they don’t turn out to be too dumb.
That’s not really surprising, considering
that she has a background that’s a little com
plicated Not unsettling, hut at least varied.
Her mother is a Unitarian minister, and
Daphne was raised in Berkeley during that
college town’s most tumultuous years.
Then, early in her high school years, her
mother began a ministry in Woodstock, Ver
mont (pop. 500).
So where does that kind of move leave her
now, socio-political- and philosophy-wise?
“Oh, I’m like really-really conservative,
and 1 love Ronnie Reagan and ...”
The Valley Girl parody comes and goes
quickly, and Zuniga hastens to set the re
cord straight. “No, just kidding. Just kid
ding. Quite the opposite, actually. My dad
was a philosophy student; my mother was
getting her master’s degree. When you grow
up in that environment, it’s natural to ques
tion authority, to stand up for what you
think is right We had walkouts and sit-ins
all the way through elementary school. 1
remember a teachers’ strike when 1 was in
the 7th grade. For three months we didn’t go
to school. We stayed home and read books
and did book reports. Growing up there,
you learned about taking action to change
the system.
“Then we moved to Woodstock, a small
town, very conservative, mostly farmers I
didn’t fit in right away. They were all jocks
and didn't really know what todo with me.”
I
Daphne Zuniga
Does Schtick
She Was So Sweet in The Sure Thing...
Now She’s Out in Space
But by the time Zuniga moved to Ver
mont, she had already begun pursuing act
ing in a fairly serious way, with classes and
her first role in a school play in Berkeley at
the age of 12.
“It was H.M.S. Pinafore. I played a male
role, an admiral,” she recalls. Non-sexist
casting?
“No, it’s just that no boys wanted to do
it.”
Leaving Woodstock after graduation.
Zuniga attended the American Conserva
tory in San Francisco, worked in children’s
Daphne Zuniga as a princess
from outer space, stranded
in the desert with her
prissy droid (Lorene Yarnell
under the metal, with
the voice of Joan Rivers).
theater and summer stock, and then moved
to Los Angles to attend UCLA
“I started doing student films, and then I
got an agent. I never graduated, because I
left in the middle of my junior year I was
beginning to get work, and there wasn’t
enough time for everything.”
Zuniga’s eyes brighten as she starts to
talk of her professional acting career, short
and meteoric as it has l>ecn. It’s her most
comfortable subject, and she discusses en
thusiastically her first film role with only a
hint of sarcasm.
“It was a 'don’t miss’ horror film called
The Initiation. 1 got to play two roles, twin
sisters It was great. A victim and a killer 1
got to murder people and run around and
scream a lot. In the end, I fought myself, and
I even got to die on screen!”
She proceeded from dying on screen to
various other roles, including that of a social
worker in the Lucille Ball television movie
continued on page 14