Fate Has Been Kind to Ricki Lake, Mainstay of John Waters’ Movies

“I really believe in fate,” chirps Ricki Lake as she rocks back and forth on a porch swing at a friend’s Hollywood home. Although she’s just turned 22, Lake has achieved the mantle of John Waters’ favorite teen in roles in his last two movies, “Hairspray” and “Cry-Baby.” And she knows that she ended up in Waters’ close circle because “I was meant to.”

“I made this deal with my parents three years ago,” she recalls. “I really hated going to Ithaca College, so after finishing my freshman finals, I decided that I wanted give a try at show biz for a solid six months. The deal was that if nothing turned up in that time, I’d go back to school.

“A week later, I landed the part in ‘Hairspray.’ Nothing in my life since has just happened . It’s fate.”

It’s also a kind of living fantasy, because Lake freely admits that she’s star-struck. Besides Waters’ gallery of camp/pop stars from the late Divine to Debbie Harry, she worked with Peter Falk and Emily Lloyd in “Cookie,” Burt Young in “Last Exit to Brooklyn,” Melanie Griffith and Harrison Ford in “Working Girl” and the women of “China Beach.”

That may be why she isn’t feeling nervous acting in her first play, Cynthia Heimel’s “A Girl’s Guide to Chaos,” at the Tiffany Theatre. “I’m not carrying the show--it’s a feature part--so I don’t feel the pressure. Besides, it’s a lot of fun, since my character Lurene is so different from me. She’s a tough chick, married, with a kid, and tells it like it is to the play’s older women, who are much more confused.

“I’m sweet and sugar-coated, feeling the need to please others, so I really admire Lurene.”