prom - Movieline

Interviews || BY Jen Yamato || 04 28 2011 7:10 PM

Aimee Teegarden: From Friday Night Lights to Prom to Producing and Beyond

Aimee Teegarden first caught Hollywood's eye as Julie Taylor, the coach's daughter on the critically acclaimed series Friday Night Lights, but in the five years since the show premiered she's done a lot of growing up -- and smartly so. This week Teegarden steps into her first starring film role by leading a cast of fresh-scrubbed high schoolers in Disney's Prom, but as she looks toward a burgeoning career as producer and carefully plots her acting choices (including a teen action series for Warner Bros. opposite Twilight's Jackson Rathbone) it's clear this teen idol has a long-term strategy in mind.

Interviews || BY Jen Yamato || 04 25 2011 9:20 AM

Thomas McDonell on Prom, Dark Shadows, and His Chance Start in Acting

In Disney's high school dramedy Prom, newcomer Thomas McDonell plays an archetypal bad boy straight out of a John Hughes flick -- sensitive, rebellious, and enticingly misunderstood. In real life, the 24-year-old former art student seems such the antithesis of the typical teen idol that you could call him the Judd Nelson of the Tiger Beat set. (His follow-up to Prom: Playing the young Johnny Depp in Tim Burton's Dark Shadows.) Surely, McDonell's the only Disney star in history that can make legions of tween girls scream with one brooding glance and say he's performed Ionesco on stage in Scotland. So how did McDonell shoot into the spotlight so quickly -- and what's Jackie Chan got to do with it?