lizzy greene Words by ELIZABETH FORREST Photos by CATHERINE POWELL
Teen actress Lizzy Greene’s life changed when an agency came to one of her childhood theater performances. Immediately, they liked what they saw. They asked her mom if they could sign Lizzy, and their attendance ultimately led to the audition that got her onto her dream network, Nickelodeon. She auditioned for the role of Dawn in the series Nicky, Ricky, Dicky & Dawn. “I was telling myself ‘Listen, I’ll go in there and give my craziest, best performance or I’ll leave regretting that I didn’t’,” she remembers of preparing for the audition. There were no nerves, only excitement, and she landed the part. Dawn as a character is so similar to Lizzy herself that it often doesn’t feel like she’s doing any acting at all on set. Lizzy describes Dawn as “very outgoing, very confident, and the glue that holds the family together”. As a network, Nickelodeon often writes characters around the actor or actress. Because of this, Dawn didn’t require much writing at all because of all of the similarities between her and Lizzy. Lizzy also co-starred in Nickelodeon’s Tiny Christmas, a movie with a message of acceptance and remembering to never judge a book by its cover. In Tiny Christmas, Lizzy’s character Barkley was nothing like a character Lizzy has ever portrayed. “She wears a fanny pack; that explains how crazy she is,” Lizzy laughs.
Barkley was a challenge because she was such a polar opposite to both Dawn and Lizzy herself, but she enjoyed the opportunity to play a new type of character. Barkley had a great sense of humor, and an end scene gets serious and allows viewers to learn more about why Barkley is the way she is. At 14, Lizzy has work days that can last from seven hours to nine and a half hours, depending on whether it is a rehearsal day or a shooting day. She travels between living in Los Angeles to act and Texas to spend time with her family, so she is always on the go. The long days and constant traveling is made easier by the people she works with on set. “I would go for sushi every Thursday at lunch time with Allison [Munn],” Lizzy remembers. Allison (who plays Lizzy’s mom on the show) wasn’t the only cast member she would get along with; Lizzy was close to everyone and credits those around her for teaching her everything she knows about acting. In addition to enjoying the job itself, Lizzy draws inspiration from her fans and loves to meet them. She likes to listen to their stories and learn about which episode of Ricky, Nicky, Dicky & Dawn are their favorite. One recent, memorable fan meeting took place outside of a roller skating rink. When Lizzy was leaving, fans of the show began to recognize her and wanted to take pictures with
her. One fan had a birthday that day, and after staring at Lizzy shocked for a few moments, she came over to Lizzy and jumped on her to hug her. “That’s why I love my job so much,” Lizzy says, “Because I can touch people like that. They get so happy when they see me, but at the end of the day, I’m just a kid that was picked from a small little town in Texas.” Since Nicky, Ricky, Dicky & Dawn has reached its end, Lizzy is thinking more about the future. Professionally, she looks up to Ellen DeGeneres and Oprah Winfrey as her role models because they are confident, driven women that make it their goal to help others. In the future, Lizzy would love to play a more mature character and is interested in playing confident, empowering characters similar to those of her role models - and she would also love to do her own stunts. “They would always want to get a stunt double for me, and I’d say, ‘no, no, no I can scale the building!’” Lizzy remembers. (For liability reasons, that hasn’t happened yet, but she hopes it will become reality one day.) Lizzy has also given some thought into whether she would prefer to stay in television or move onto working more in film. Television and film are two completely different worlds based on the camera shots: movies are typically shot on one camera, while television shows are often shot with multiple cameras. “With a multi-cam show, you go much faster NKDMAG.COM
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