Newcomer Julie Warner Is Woman for the ‘90s in ‘Doc Hollywood’

Julie Warner, who makes her film debut opposite Michael J. Fox in “Doc Hollywood,” believes there’s one too many adolescent males running the world--especially the world of movies.

“Hollywood influences the way people think about women,” says the native New Yorker. “If you keep portraying the same old blond bimbo over and over and don’t balance it out with what women are really like. . . . That’s just some Playboy fantasy. Women have to say ‘No. We have so much to give and don’t box us in.’ ”

In “Doc Hollywood,” Warner, 26, plays Fox’s rather unconventional love interest--an ambulance driver and single parent who turns her back on big-city life and returns to her Southern hometown.

“I think she’s approaching more what women in the ‘90s are going to have to face. I think she really does want to have a career and more children and live in a place that has solid values. But she wants a man to share it with and not just some sleazy guy who is trying to pick up every babe in a skirt.”

Warner, a theater-arts graduate from Brown University, caught the acting bug some 18 years ago when she saw Tatum O’Neal in “Paper Moon.”

“We’re about the same age,” Warner says. “When I saw that, I thought, ‘Wow! This girl can be my friend and she is soooo great.’ I always loved to play games. I was always saying, ‘Let’s play “Partridge Family” or “The Brady Bunch.” ’ Acting is the ultimate form of make-believe.”

Warner moved to Los Angeles after graduating from Brown and landed her first acting job a year later as Andrew Dice Clay’s loudmouthed Brooklyn girlfriend on an HBO special.

And Warner insists “The Diceman” is really a pussycat. “Everybody gives the guy a bum rap, but all I can say, from my point of view, is that he gave me my first big break. I’m really indebted to him for that.”