Community Notebook

Jolie Peters, Child Actress

“Acting is something Jolie wanted to do, nothing I ever pushed her to do,” says her mother, Karin, reflecting on the growing momentum of her daughter’s TV and film career. “As a matter of fact, I think it’s a weird way of life, but she really enjoys it. The thing about Jolie is, she’s nine going on forty. Everyone says that.” Karin is open, chatty, with a direct gaze, and a strong build and features. As she speaks, she is constantly moving through the compact rooms of their small Woodstock home, past the two parakeets and their larger, more aggressive Quaker parrot, while their Toto clone “Chippie” follows under foot. One corner of the main room is filled with plants, another books, and in the upstairs walkway, towering piles of games. A cathedral ceiling offers some sense of breadth. The humble house is chaotic at first inspection, between the lack of space and the cacophony of squawking birds and the yapping of Chippie. As Karin Peters maneuvers through the room and fixes this writer a perfect cup of tea, the 8-by-10 black- and-white glossy of Jolie Peters, actress, stares up from the coffee table. She seems confident but relaxed, focused, yet with a giggle seeming to trail not far off. She has milky skin, long locks of brown, and the deep blue wide set eyes and strong jaw-line of her mother’s clan.

Jolie is on her way home from ice-skating with her dad, Jerry Mitnick, and friends. Being allowed to remain a kid despite any successes is of paramount importance to her parents. Settling into a wicker rocking chair Karin says, “I don’t want Jolie to give up any of her childhood to do this. I won’t let her do TV series because to do them you have to go to school on the set and also I won’t relocate us somewhere else. I think it’s very important that these kids stay really normal.” These kids means children, like Jolie who might do as many as five auditions a week, often gross more than their parents, and who may work as much as one month a year. Since signing with Persona Management and Abrams Artists less than two years ago, Jolie has booked more than 10 voice-overs, national and regional commercials, including such corporate names as Tide and 1-800-Flowers, theater (Woodstock Community Theater,) a spot on NBC’s “Third Watch.” In addition, Jolie’s appeared in four films, including Marci X with Damon Wayans and Lisa Kudrow, and Hysterical Blindness with Uma Thurman and Juliette Lewis, both to be released this year.

Soon Jolie is bounding through the door. She is energetic, friendly, very much a kid. Smiling brightly, she introduces herself and her dad, kisses her mom, rustles Chippie’s fur, and excitedly receives a book and face paint set that her mom has bought her earlier in the day. Then all at once, she is ready to begin. She folds into a chair, immediately focused. I ask to see her room. She guides me past her favorite board games including Guess Who and her newly acquired Survivor, and on up to her bedroom where a sizable collection of fairy statuettes decorate her dresser and her older brother’s photo-collages are proudly displayed on a wall. It is a girl’s room, replete with tiny stuffed animals and small dolls.
Back down stairs, Jolie is a bright-eyed firecracker, eager to answer every question without delay. Her favorite actress is Drew Barrymore and she would love to work with her. Jolie’s favorite movie is Never Been Kissed, starring the same. As she speaks, she rides on a sea of hyperbole. She’s always loved to perform, doing plays “for my whole school” and dancing, even when she was “really little.” When asked what kind of future roles she’d like to get, she answered, “I’d like to do a silly role because I usually have ones that are very dramatic. Also, I’d like to do a movie that other kids are in so when we’re not shooting I can, you know, hang out with kids my own age.” Does she like auditioning? (I could only imagine the waiting in line with competitive little prima donnas, having to memorize scripts, having to perform in front of strangers…) “Yup!” she answers enthusiastically, without delay, and showing none of the pre-conceptions of her interviewer. “I like it because when you go in there you have a feeling and it’s like you’re ready!”

When asked if success is very important to her, she immediately sheds the cutsie giggles, and maturely answers, “I like to do it [act], because I like to do it, but one day I’d like to be famous because I like the excitement.” Jolie adds, rather girlishly, “And I love the Academy Awards.” She returns to her nine-year-old self when posed with the question of where she’d spend her money if she really had any. “If I’m, you know, older I’d buy a big house, and buy one for my mom and dad. I’d buy a Rav 4! If I’m younger I’ll probably make sure my room is huge. Oh, and a new music studio for my dad and my mom’s own real estate agency! But if I don’t make it,” her face lit up, “I would be a pre-school teacher, because I really like little kids.” Then, after a thoughtful pause, she jumped up with a flurry of arms and legs and said, “or a figure skater!”
In the video clips her dark-eyed father proudly shows me, Jolie indeed seems to move effortlessly between roles. She is the playful, all-American girl spinning a hoolah hoop in a Macy’s commercial and then a victim of terrorism, on NBC’S “Third Watch,” wedged in agony under an enormous refrigeration unit, her leg badly crushed. But as focused and talented as young Peters might be, her mother is more practical about the odds of her daughter’s success. “I think every parent must think their kid’s going to be famous. But there are so many kids out there. When you think of the odds of your kid getting a role, it’s pretty amazing.”

“It’s a lot of shlepping, it’s a lot of work. And I work as a real estate agent too. Her Dad, Jerry, is a musician. So we share the driving. The hardest part is driving back and forth to the city for an ‘if’, because everything’s always an ‘if’. You just never know. But as long as she continues to do well, I don’t mind driving her. If you’re working and you’re doing something you like then you’re lucky. Jolie likes it. There are those [stage] mothers who say, “I just really want my kids to do it for the money!” I would never do that to my kid, because they give up a lot.”

Then something suddenly happens in the cluttered Peters/Mitnick living room, something between the lively birds and dog vying for attention, and the chattering of a mother, daughter, father, and writer/fly-on-the-wall. It was the realization that what I was witnessing was something other than din and chaos, or blind ambition, and something much closer to the simple integrity of a devoted family. Quite relieving when you think this might have been just another child-exploitation story. This is a happy family, is all I could think. And then on my way out to the car, Karin Peters adds between puffs on her cigarette, “Since 9/11, the success of Jolie’s career has much less meaning, you know?”

—Jenny Wonderling