The Sky’s the Limit for Teen Star

Tina Majorino of Camarillo isn’t old enough to drive, but she already has a list of professional acting credits that could shame a seasoned veteran twice, even thrice, her age. The 14-year-old, who began her career when she was 2, recently played Alice in the NBC production of “Alice in Wonderland.”

In 1997, she received critical praise for her role opposite Ellen Barkin and Oprah Winfrey in ABC’s film “Before Women Had Wings” and was seen in the four-hour miniseries “True Women” for CBS.

“I choose quality roles that have a good message, a good director, good producer, good company and good stars,” Tina said.

“I want to be in the kind of movie I would like to go see with my friends.” This weekend, she, and probably a few of her friends, will be mingling with others at the Ben Franklin Kite Classic at the Reagan Presidential Library near Simi Valley, a fund-raiser for the Ventura County Discovery Center.

Tina said she was inspired to become an actor as a very young child when she watched “The Wizard of Oz.” The toddler so appreciated how much the characters gave the audience that she decided to become an entertainer herself.

“My mother didn’t want me to get into this business because there is so much rejection and she did not want me to feel I was less than I am,” Tina said.

No one else in her family is in show business, but Tina was so determined to have an acting career that her mother allowed her to give it a try. Soon, she was making commercials--promoting peanut butter, canned meat, cereal and fast food.

“I had to eat 20 bowls of cereal for one commercial and it made me sick,” Tina said.

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But it was feature films and television shows that she wanted to be in, and in 1992 she got her first film role, with Meg Ryan and Andy Garcia in Touchstone’s “When a Man Loves a Woman.” Tina portrayed the older daughter in a family falling apart because of alcohol abuse.

That dramatic role was followed by two lighter movies in 1994.

In “Corrina, Corrina,” a Whoopi Goldberg comedy about a family in search of love, Tina portrayed Molly, the only child of a recently widowed father who falls in love with an unconventional housekeeper.

Tina described her movie work as great fun, but also a learning experience. One particularly memorable experience was working in “Andre,” a movie about a harbor seal who journeyed from Boston to Maine each summer to visit a little girl, played by Tina, who helps rescue him.

“I felt so lucky to be able to go in every day and work with the seals. There were five of them and they were all very smart and looked like little people,” said Tina, giggling. “They could understand everything you said.”

Many of the sets and other characters Tina worked with on “Alice” were not actually there when she filmed her part. Considerable use of special effects was made in the $40-million production, which required Tina to do much of the acting alone and without the benefit of a set. Later, she was surprised to find out what had been dropped into the scenes with her.

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“In one scene, I was running from something that had been described to me as a dark cloud,” Tina said. At a screening two weeks before the show aired, she found out she was actually running from a huge crow.

“I don’t mind working without actors or surroundings,” Tina said. “That’s my job--pretending.”

Lately, the teenager has been pretending less and just living a more ordinary life--spending time with lifelong friends she met growing up in Thousand Oaks, as well as singing, dancing and playing the piano. She also has been sifting through scripts and focusing on learning more about the business she hopes will continue to provide her with work when she grows up.

“I’m learning about producing and directing right now,” Tina said.

Her father, Bob Majorino, owner of Prudential California Realty and a board member of the Discovery Center, said that Tina “knows making movies is not glamorous and is intrigued about how everything works.”

She also seems to understand that while she loves acting, there are other important things in life.

The money she has earned acting has been put in savings for college and other future needs, she said. And her spending money comes from baby-sitting her cousins, household chores or doing filing and odd jobs at her dad’s office.

The high school freshman is an honor student who gets much of her formal education from a private tutor. Her love of learning is nourished, she said, by all the unusual experiences she has had in her career. Besides learning how to train a seal, she also worked with dialect coaches so she could speak with an English accent as “Alice.” She has even practiced flying kites.

“In ‘Corrina, Corrina,’ my character Molly flew a kite,” Tina said. “When she let it go, it flew away, symbolizing her letting go of her fears.”

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So at the kite event Sunday, Tina will be putting her learned skills to good use and sharing her experiences with younger children.

Those who attend the event will have an opportunity to meet Tina as they decorate and fly “Frustrationless” kites donated by Rocketdyne, watch professional kite-flyer Dan Rubesh of Ventura show off his expertise, and see an unusual flyover of experimental aircraft.

The event goes from noon until 4 p.m. with free admission and kites, while supplies last, and an opportunity to purchase T-shirts, souvenirs and concessions to help raise funds for the $23-million Discovery Center scheduled to open in 2002 on land next to the Thousand Oaks Civic Arts Plaza.

If there is bad weather, there will be no kite flying.

“We can’t have people out flying kites in a lightning storm,” said Discovery Executive Director Carrie Glicksteen.