A More Physical Cop

Even after completing her second “RoboCop” outing as Detroit police officer Anne Lewis, actress Nancy Allen admits that “swinging guns and throwing punches around just doesn’t come naturally to me! The physicality of the role was foreign to me, and I had to work hard to make it real. It’s sort of the antithesis of what I was trained for, which was dancing.”

But, according to Allen, Officer Lewis has plenty to do in “RoboCop 2,” which opens June 22. “She has become tougher and she gets involved in a lot more physical action this time.” Allen feels her partnership with the RoboCop (played by Peter Weller) is firmly established. “The bond is there from the get-go in this film, “ she explained. “They’re really in tune together.”

In this she was helped by “RoboCop 2” director Irwin Kershner, whom she says “works a little more from the inside out, character-wise. He’s more interested in character motivation and got me to thinking about why Lewis would do something, instead of just setting the mood.” As for Weller, Allen finds him to be “a fun and very giving actor; a good collaborator.”

Allen, the daughter of a Yonkers, N.Y., policeman, says she was terribly shy as a child, so her mother enrolled her in dance classes at age 4. “The more I took dance, the more I liked it.” She ended up at Manhattan’s High School for the Performing Arts, where she studied dance for a year before a series of lucky breaks in modeling and commercial jobs put her firmly on the path to being a film actress.

Allen will be seen this summer in Lifetime cable movie called “Memories of Murder.” She plays a woman who wakes up one morning with amnesia and finds out she’s lost two years of her life.

And as for the future? “I’ve been toying with the idea of getting a series, a half-hour show, something along the lines of what Candice Bergen has or Jamie Lee Curtis had.”

But even more, Allen would like to develop projects and be a producer. “I have a project in development at Carolco with Ronnie Weisberg. I like working on the script, piecing and putting together a package and assembling creative people.”