Whatever Happened To: Amanda Peterson

Child stars come and go like nobody's business. But none quite like Amanda Peterson. By the time she hit 16, she'd already starred next to Ethan Hawke, River Phoenix and Patrick Dempsey, to name a few. She'd also been in a handful of TV series and, two years earlier, had already acted in over 30 television commercials.

Her first big break was in 1985, when at the age of 13, she starred in Joe Dante's sci-fi adventure Explorers. River Phoenix and Ethan Hawke play two best friends, both obsessed with the idea of space travel, geeking over comicbooks and black-and-white monster movies. With the help of a new friend, they manage to assemble a small spacecraft out of various bits and pieces found in a nearby junkyard. Amanda Peterson plays Lori Swenson; Ethan Hawke's school crush, and according to Joe Dante, both River Phoenix and Ethan Hawke had real-life crushes on their co-star. Though not a particularly big part, she was nominated for a Young Artist Award in the category of 'Best Starring Performance by a Young Actress - Motion Picture', and this certainly helped her two years down the line in gaining what would become her best-loved and most memorable role.

The '80s was the decade of the teen movie and, despite the Brat Pack seemingly ruling the roost for the majority of the years, several other unforgettable teen flicks were introduced to us, too. Directed by Steve Rash, Can't Buy Me Love is an all-time classic teen movie and, without a doubt, his best work in over 25 years. Now lumbered with making direct-to-DVD American Pie and Bring it On sequels, you'd find it hard to imagine that somewhere along the line, Rash created an absolute teen movie gem, which was to become a huge stepping stone in Patrick Dempsey's still-strong career.

The movie, originally titled Boy Rents Girl, centers around unpopular nerd Ronald Miller (Dempsey), who is haplessly in love with the most beautiful, popular girl in school, Cindy Mancini (Peterson). When Cindy finds herself in a desperate predicament, Ronald comes to her rescue - for a price. Agreeing to lend her $1000 for her mother's wine-stained designer suit, Cindy, in return, must pose as Ronald's girlfriend. Without many other options, Cindy agrees, and what follows is a humorous but touching story about the ups and downs of popularity, high school, life and love.

Bearing in mind that Amanda was fifteen-going-on-sixteen at the time of Can't Buy Me Love, you've got to put your hands together for her absolutely fantastic perfomance, particularly a scene which features her character bursting out into tears in front of a gathering of kids. She did a completely convincing job as the popular-but-torn Cindy, and I can't imagine any other actress doing better. The critics seemed to agree when, back in '88, she was nominated once again for a Young Artist Award under the category of 'Best Young Actress in a Motion Picture - Comedy', losing out to the adorable Maia Brewton from Adventures in Babysitting. Patrick Dempsey on the other hand, was also nominated for the same award in the male category, coming first place ahead of Adventures in Babysitting star, Kieth Coogan.

All in all, Amanda was nominated for five Young Artist awards, three being for television work. Eventually in 1988, she came first place, winning 'Best Young Actress Starring in a Television Drama Series' for her work on A Year in The Life.


From here on in, Amanda's film roles became not-so-great, although, as usual, she managed to pull off great performances. In 1989, she starred alongside Jami Gertz and Kirk Cameron in Listen to Me, in which she plays a college debate-team student. Her character, Donna, is partially disabled, wearing a leg brace and walking with a cane, after an accident years before. The movie itself is quite dull, but there is a lovely scene which shows an emotional Donna telling her boyfriend to go and dance with whoever he wants, because of her inability to. He then asks her to dance with him, but she is insistant that she can't do so. He then picks her up and twirls her around, telling her he loves her.

Less successful movies include independent flick The Lawless Land, one of many post-apocalyptic action films to be pumped out of the '80s, as well as TV movie Fatal Charm in which Amanda plays a teenager infatuated with a guy who turns out to be a serial killer. Beyond the '80s, she had two other major movie roles, the first being 1991 TV movie I Posed For Playboy, about three women who, for one reason or another, decide to pose for Playboy magazine - a movie which is apparently much less steamy than you'd expect. She then disappeared for four years until her final role in 1995: Windrunner, about a high school boy whose father is sent to jail.

Since 1995, it seems Amanda has been on permanent hiatus, vanishing from the movie industry completely. Though over ten years has passed, she is nowhere close to being a forgotten talent, and there are many of us who sit and watch Can't Buy Me Love and ask; whatever happened to Amanda Peterson? (And how come she gets to snog Patrick Dempsey? Unfair!)

As of this month, there are rumours that she is enrolled in the theatre program at Colorado State University. As well as this, she is still registered with the Screen Actors Guild. This is the first news in over five years regarding the whereabouts of Amanda, and it gives us fans a little hope that one day, she'll return to the big screen.