Some of you might not know freshman Mackenzie Johnson, but you soon will. This girl is bound for stardom. How many Western Mass teens do you know get to spend their summer vacation acting in a movie staring Kate Winslet and Toby Maguire that was filmed in Winchester, Mass?
The movie is called Labor Day, and Johnson appears in one scene. She lays on a towel in a bathing suit in the front yard of a large house with two friends.
“We had to wave to the main character,” says Johnson. “There wasn’t a script, but you can hear me conversing with the other two girls. We were talking about boys.”
According to Johnson the other two “sun-tanners” were really friendly and helped her out. They had acted in movies before, but it was her first time.
She got the part through a talent agency that represents her. For her scene, she got the costume (a one-piece bathing suit) fitted a few days before, and she got her hair and makeup done the day of the shoot.
“The movie takes place in the eighties, so the costumes were kind of out there,” says Johnson. “They were every color imaginable.”
Then, for five long hours she had to sit in a cafeteria chair waiting to go to her scene, and she didn’t know anyone there. However. this didn’t make her nervous, but rather just very excited.
“I couldn’t wait to go out there and do my scene,” she says.
While it may have been Johnson’s first movie, it certainly wasn’t her first acting gig.
She started acting when she was six when her mother found the theater here in Ludlow. They were doing a play she was old enough to audition for, and loved it instantly. She has now been in over 25 shows all around Massachusetts.
Her favorite play was “James and the Giant Peach” in Northhampton where she sang in the chorus.
As of right now, she doesn’t have anything lined up, but she wants to do more in the field of movies.
“I loved it more than anything I have ever done before,” she says, “and it was good pay- I went on a shopping spree after.”
Her parents are supportive in what she does and encourage her to do her best and go to auditions.
Mackenzie says, “I want to be famous, but not snotty. I want to stay myself.”
