Footloose Star Lori Singer Reveals Why She’s Never Seen the Remake

Lori Singer, who starred in the original Footloose, hasn’t seen the 2011 remake — but probably not for the reason you would guess. Typically, when these kinds of things pop up in the press, the answer is that the actor couldn’t bear to see the character handed off, or were somehow put off by some aspect of the second version. In the case of Footloose, there’s nothing so dour going on. Singer just…kind of missed it. The star explained as much when ComicBook.com’s Chris Killian asked her about the experience of watching somebody else play the role of Ariel Moore, a part she played in 1984.

Singer said ironically, she was interested in seeing the movie, in part because of how it differed from the original. 

“I’m embarrassed to tell you, I didn’t see it,” Singer told ComicBook.com. “And it wasn’t for any specific reason. There’s just so many films and things that I just didn’t see it. I saw a clip of it, it looked really good. They focused on the dance, which, I know when we were doing the film originally, that [director] Herb Ross was very insistent on who the actors were and we rehearsed every scene. We went to the locations to rehearse them weeks before. It was really very serious.” 

Singer continued singing the praises of her 1984 co-stars, adding, “Every scene was taken very seriously, with great actors. John Lithgow? Amazing. Diane Weist? Phenomenal. Kevin [Bacon]? Amazing. I sound like a reviewer. And Chris [Penn]? Everybody, Jim Youngs… We had a high-powered, intense, serious cast. We expected a lot from each other, and that came through in the scenes, I think. We lived a lot of what we had written.”

In Footloose, Bacon plays a Chicago teen who moves to a small town in the Midwest, where dancing is illegal. “Footloose laws” actually existed in parts of the U.S., with one in Arkansas being taken off the books as late as 2018 (although nobody had actually been arrested or fined for it in at least 20 years at the time). The movie was inspired by a similar in Elmore City, Oklahoma. That particular ordinance ended in March 1980, when the school board allowed students to organize a high school prom. In 2010, residents recreated the prom for its 30th anniversary, and kicked things off with Kenny Loggins’ famous Footloose title track.

Footloose is available now for the first time ever on 4K Ultra HD 2024 from Paramount Home Entertainment.