Hanging out with Annie Potts

Well, at least you know her work.

She played the spunky secretary in "Ghostbusters," the matronly mentor to Molly Ringwald's angst-ridden teen in "Pretty In Pink" and a comedic designer during a seven-year sting on CBS' "Designing Women."

She's not a big, blockbuster star like, say, Nicole Kidman or Halle Berry. Yet she's got one of those faces you know you've seen before and, for whatever reason, you just kind of like her.

Then you meet her one day. And you realize you didn't know anything about her at all.

First of all, she's tiny - maybe 5-foot-3-inches tall - with a body so small it looks as if it could be zipped up in a carry-on bag at the airport. And the second thing is, she is a star.

No, she's not the red-carpet trotting, smile-for-the-cameras type of star. Yet, she has that thing - that energy, vitality, life - that makes her the most interesting person in the room, even if she's scrunched up in a little ball, leaning against the wall, taking a break.

You first see her as she reads to a group of children in an elementary school classroom. She sits on the edge of a high-backed rocking chair, perched in perfect posture and holding her storybook in front of her, looking a bit like a Southern debutante.

The classroom is an all-ages elementary school on the campus of Stephens College, a tiny, predominantly women's college (enrollment 700) just down the street from the University of Missouri.

Potts, a 1973 alumnae of Stephens, is spending a month on campus to help teach drama students as well as act in the winter production of Stephen Sondheim's "A Little Night Music." Oh, and of course drop in to read a few stories to youngsters.

You gaze around the room. The kids are absolutely transfixed as Potts reads.

She gives each character a unique voice. Her reading is a cross between a one-woman, one-act play and a sort of live-action cartoon as she dramatically uses her lime green scarf to mimic the motions of a baby elephant's trunk.

After a couple minutes, you're transfixed, too. You find yourself listening to the story and stopping short of dropping to the floor and sitting cross-legged.

That's how you know she's a star. Potts has that intangible but absolutely real quality that makes her an actress in movies, TV and stage, and the rest of us just the people who watch.

This is the first face of Annie Potts: Annie the performer.

The kids in the classroom know she's a star even though they're far too young to really know any of her professional work. They're drawn to her instinctively - perhaps because Potts also gives off a serious motherly vibe. She's the parent of three boys, the eldest a senior at Brown University and the youngest a 7-year-old second grader.

The children in the Stephens classroom address her as "AnniePotts," all one word.

"AnniePotts, will you read us another story?" a girl asks.

"Well, I have to go meet with my actors, but I promise I'll come back," Potts replies sweetly and brightly. She's been in town two weeks and already read to the class twice.

"AnniePotts, one time when you came to read to us we were in the paper."

"Really? Well, did you all like that?" she asks.

Most of the children nod happily, but one girl says, "No, not really."

Potts frowns sympathetically. "Well, sometimes being in the paper is a good thing, and sometimes it isn't," she says.

Potts waves to the children as she hustles down the hallway, makes her way out the back door and climbs not into a limo, but a four-door sedan.

She speeds over to Stephens Playhouse. She scrunches up into a chair in a classroom. Even at 51, Potts looks more like a student than a guest instructor.

The students are seniors in the theater program, mere months away from entering the world of showbiz. Potts watches as the students do cold readings of plays, pretending they are either auditioning for TV or a film or stage.

Their focus is on the readings, but Potts still claims their attention. When a scene is funny, they shoot quick glances at Potts to see if she laughed. When someone flubs a line, they look at her to see if she caught it.

Potts simply stares ahead with a steely gaze.

During one scene, a student flubs a line, saying "Saliva Plath" instead of the famed, depressed poet "Sylvia Plath."

At the end of the scene, Potts offers her criticisms.

"I have trouble understanding you," she tells the young woman. "You're an African-American woman. There are half as many roles for you as there are for white women. That means you have to be twice as good. You have to have good diction. This is your senior year. You must make it your mission to master this. See a speech therapist if you need to. Otherwise, you won't make it."

Her tone is blunt and firm, but not harsh. She addresses the group.

"We all have things that we must overcome," Potts says. "When I was here, I was this poor little Southern girl with a huge, crippling accent. I was just like you. I had to work on that every day."

You're seeing another face of Annie Potts: Annie the professional.

She lets the kids know it's a ruthless business but never tries to derail their dream of seeing their name in lights.

"You know, the people in the casting chair aren't as cynical as you'd think," she says. "They all want to be there when the next Julia Roberts comes so they can say, 'Oh my God, this one's got it, baby.'"

And then, quick as a blink, Potts puts on another face: Annie the person.

She tells a self-deprecating tale about reading for a part in a film with Robert De Niro. The students - some 10 years older than their friends over in the elementary school - are equally as mesmerized by Potts as she launches into her story.

"I was 10 months pregnant, and I was so huge," she says, gesturing around her Bic-pen thin waste. "My thigh was about as big as my waist is now. I was so big the only thing that would fit was a pair of my husband's sweat pants. I'm reading with the casting director and I stand up and those damned sweat pants fell right to the floor."

The class roars with laughter. She looks down at the floor with a slight twinge of embarrassment.

"And there I was. I did not get the role."

Potts makes her way over to the cafeteria for lunch. You take a chair a few seats away from her and listen as she talks to the theater students bunched around her. She listens to their stories and offers quips of advice, seeming more like a sorority sister than Hollywood success.

"I have a question about weight," one student asks. "Do I need to be a size zero?"

Potts scrunches up her nose and looks at the slender young woman. "What are you now, a size 2?" Potts asks.

"I'm a 4," the student says in hushed tones. "Well, between a 4 and a 6."

Potts rolls her eyes, "You're fine. Just be in shape. It took me a while to catch on to that."

She picks at her salad of spinach leaves before dashing off to her next stop - play practice. Potts plays Desiree Armfeldt, a mischievous mistress in "A Little Night Music."

On the stage, Potts wears all her faces. As a performer, she delivers her lines with rich tone and bluster, yet generous enough as to not outshine her young counterparts.

As a professional, she aids one of her co-stars, instructing him on where to stand and what his character is thinking in the scene.

And as a person, Potts chats with her fellow cast mates, sharing more tales of her career.

As the players practice a scene Potts isn't in, she sneaks away to a wall and curls into a small ball on the floor. For the first time all day, you almost lose track of her - she almost disappears into a tiny dot on the floor.

Then a cast member whispers in her ear. She smiles, and it's as if the room lights up. Potts is back on again.

And you can't help but keep watching.

The Annie Potts file
Age: 51
Born: Franklin, Ky.
College: 1973 graduate of Stephens College in Columbia
Credits: "Ghostbusters" (1984), "Pretty In Pink" (1986), voice of Bo Peep in "Toy Story" (1997) and "Toy Story 2" (1999); seven-year stint on CBS' "Designing Women" (1986-1993.)
Currently: Playing alongside Stephens College students in the musical "A Little Night Music" at Stephens Playhouse, Dec. 5-7 and 10-13. Adults $10, seniors $5, Stephens' students $3.