alexz johnson

Alexzandra Spencer Johnson (November 4, 1986) is a Canadian actress and singer/songwriter best known for her performances in Final Destination 3 and Instant Star.

Instant Star is shown on The-N network, where it is the second most popular show, behind Degrassi: The Next Generation. In its Friday night time slot, it is the most popular cable network show among female teens in the USA. Around the world, 121 countries have bought broadcast rights to the show. [1] [2]

The show originates in Canada, and is produced by Linda Schuyler and Stephen Stohn, who also produce Degrassi. After the first season, Alexz Johnson was nominated for a Gemini Award (equivalent to an Emmy Award in the USA) for her acting. Two seasons of the show have been completed, and a third season is in production.

Alexz Johnson also sings all of the songs on the show, and has recorded two soundtrack albums: Songs from Instant Star and Instant Star 2. Alexz Johnson wrote or co-wrote 5 of the songs on the first album and is currently writing and recording all of the songs on a solo album apart from the show, for release in summer 2007. She is now signed with Capitol Records which will be promoting her solo album and the "Songs From Instant Star Three" soundtrack.

Biography

Alexz Johnson was born on November 4, 1986 in New Westminster, British Columbia, Canada. She is the sixth child in a family of ten children. One of her sisters is a stage actress, and her brother Brendan is a musician who works with her in co-writing their songs.

From the age of three, Alexz would frequently sing for her large extended family; and by the age of seven, she was receiving vocal training, participating in festivals with her local youth choir, and giving solo performances at school and community functions. She entered many talent contests and festivals, and won a National Anthem Contest at the age of 11, with her rendition of the National Anthem being heard on national television. This resulted in numerous radio and television interviews, and interest from management. That year, she was also voted Best Anthem singer of the season by the Vancouver Sun.

Locally, she was often referred to as our "West Coast Celine", and sang the National Anthem at games for the Vancouver Canucks (NHL hockey) and Vancouver Grizzlies (NBA basketball team, now based in Memphis), as well as singing at charity events and fairs around the province, and also the B.C. Summer Games. She opened the Variety Club show singing a duet with Bob McGrath, sang the first set of songs at the Molson Indy (a major car race), and entertained on New Year's Eve at Planet Hollywood at the age of 12.

With an outgoing personality, she also moved into acting, where she excelled, landing auditions for commercials and a showcase for a pilot called "Most Talented Kids". At the age of 13, she auditioned for the Disney television series So Weird which, for the final season of the show, was looking for a lead actress who could also sing. Alexz was offered the job immediately after her audition. This role was a tough assignment, because many fans of the show had already become accustomed to a different story-line, were not happy that the show had shifted from a "darker" to a "lighter" tone, and were upset that the previous lead actress Cara DeLizia was moving on as the show approached its final season. While many long-time fans of the show continued to feel this way, the show nevertheless retained its popularity, and Alexz built up a fan base on the strength of both her acting and her singing.

She also showed an interest in songwriting, and wrote one of the songs for the show. After the show ended, she continued her interest in songwriting, co-writing with her brother Brendan. She also learned guitar. She worked as a demo singer on various projects, completed a demo of her own music to shop around to music labels, and opened for David Foster at his charity events.

In the spring of 2004, a new opportunity arose, thanks to Linda Schuyler and Stephen Stohn, co-producers of the TV show Degrassi. While attending one of the performances at Canadian Idol, Linda Schuyler had the idea of developing a TV series which would chronicle the ups and downs of the musical career and personal life of the winner of an Idol-type contest. They launched a three-month nation-wide search for someone to play the lead role, and Alexz was chosen to play the lead role of Jude Harrison in the new show Instant Star.

Alexz, while still starring in the ever popular Instant Star, decided to audition for the role of Julie Christenson in the hit thriller Final Destination 3. As it turned out, she showed up at the audition in an all black, punk rockish outfit, later claiming that she had also been in a bad mood. The casting directors concluded that she would be perfect for the role of Erin Ulmer, a character with a bad attitude. This was not a large part, but she played it convincingly, right to the gruesome end. One critic, from The Philadelphia Inquirer, singled her out for praise by saying she was "like Parker Posey with raccoon mascara". [3]

To date, Final Destination 3 has grossed $113 million at the box office internationally. [4] It has now become the highest-grossing film of the franchise, beating out the first Final Destination. Video/DVD rentals have added a further $38 million since July, 2006. [5]

Instant Star

In a sense, the choice of Alexz to play the lead in Instant Star was ironic, because her own career has been much more gradual: she has been working her way up in the business over a number of years. However, Instant Star has given a major boost to both her acting and musical career: people who like the music are tuning in to the show, and people who like the show are buying the music.

Produced by the same people who produce Degrassi, and with a talented cast and set of writers, the show quickly won a following in Canada, where it is broadcast by CTV. But like Degrassi, the show found its largest audience in the USA, where it is broadcast by The-N cable network. The second season of Instant Star was shown on The-N earlier this year, and is currently being shown in Canada on CTV on Tuesdays at 8:30 pm, immediately following the results show of Canadian Idol 4.[6] CTV is making the show available both on network television and on its newly launched CTV Broadband Network, where episodes are being pre-released one day in advance of conventional broadcast.[7]

After its first season, Instant Star was nominated for three Gemini Awards at the 20th. annual awards ceremony held on Nov. 19, 2005, under the auspices of the Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television. These nominations were in the category of Best Children's or Youth Fiction Program or Series, and included: (1) Best Series; (2) Best Performance (Alexz Johnson); and (3) Best Direction (Graeme Campbell). The show won the award for Best Direction. [8]

Viewer ratings of Alexz Johnson as an actress are currently averaging 9.4 out of a possible 10.0 at the TV.com review site.[[9]]

For information on the show, please see the separate entry for Instant Star.

Music

Each episode of the show introduces a new song which is central to that episode. Usually, the lyrics pertain to what happens in that episode, but sometimes the song performance itself is a highlight of the episode, and the lyrics are incidental. There are 13 episodes in each season, giving a basic set of 13 songs in the soundtrack for each season (but the first season has one "bonus song", giving a total of 14 songs for the first CD).

For more on the CD's, please see the separate entries for Songs from Instant Star and Instant Star 2.

For several months earlier in 2006, Alexz worked on her own solo CD (apart from the show), co-writing the songs with her brother Brendan, who also plays the guitar. The most recent update (June 17 / 06) on this is from the Executive Producer of Instant Star who says that, "she's written stacks of songs for her CD, which looks like it will probably be recorded late this fall or more likely in January/February."[10] The CD will be released under the Capitol Records label.[11] In an interview on the TV show Canada AM, she said she waited for the right record deal to make sure she was "going in the right direction, musically". [12] Her solo debut will be released in summer 2007 just before season 4 of Instant Star.

Many fans who remember Alexz from the show So Weird also remember how much they liked her singing in that show. Unfortunately, the songs she sang then are not generally available, despite numerous requests from viewers.

Because of her early start in the music business, Alexz has been giving concerts for over a decade. She is at her best in front of an audience, as shown by her performance of four of the songs from seasons one and two of Instant Star at a preview event - Backstage Pass - on The-N, just before the broadcast of the second season of the show. From the first season CD, she sang Skin and Let Me Fall (both of which she co-wrote); and from the second season, she sang Another Thin Line and My Sweet Time. While they definitely like what they are hearing on the CD's, many fans would argue that the live versions of these songs are far better - more emotion and more power.

In the live performances, Alexz is accompanied by her band from the show, Spiederman Mind Explosion, which consists of three members who do double duty as actors and real-life musicians. They are: Tyler Kyte ("Vincent Spiederman" - "Speed") on lead guitar; Christopher Gaudet ("Wally") on bass; and Ian Blackwood ("Kyle"), on drums.

Alexz first enrolled in singing lessons at age six, and took classical vocal training (including opera) for at least eight years, much of it from Joseph Shore, a well-known opera singer and music educator in the Vancouver area. She is said to have a four-octave range.

Song Samples

Two-minute, CD-quality samples of 7 of the songs from Season 1, and 8 of the songs from Season 2, are on the web site of The-N, which broadcasts Instant Star in the USA: Audio - Instant Star on The-N

The rest of the songs from Season 1 can be found in one-minute, CD-quality samples on the web site of Viva, which is the counterpart of The-N in Germany (and which is also owned by Viacom), at the bottom of the following page (under "Trackliste"): Audio - Instant Star on Viva The track list includes all the original songs except for "24 Hours", but this is available as a video further up on the page, highlighted in red.

Incidentally, immediately above the word "Trackliste", there is another link (highlighted in red) called "Zukunft" (Future), which links to a TV interview (in English) in which Alexz Johnson says that music is her "number one passion" and that she looks forward to the time when she can hopefully "step away from the acting industry and just focus on being a musician." Audio + Interview - Instant Star on Viva For her, acting is "a great job" that she works hard at six months of the year and that gives her the financial freedom she needs in order to be able to create her own music for the rest of the year. As reported in the Toronto Star, the show also provides her with much of what she wears. She is a “non-shopper” who wants to stay focused on the music. [13]

As yet, no song samples from Season 2 are available on the Viva site, but Viva TV will be broadcasting the second season of Instant Star beginning July 10, 2006.

"Transparent Lies", an earlier song with sweet/soft tones, can be found at the forums of AlexzJohnson.net. [[14]]

"Skips" - a song performed by Alexz Johnson and written by Tyler Kyte for his solo album - is currently on a MySpace site at Alexz Johnson Music , along with three other songs from the Instant Star CD's. It is uncertain how long Skips will stay up on this MySpace site, as other songs are rotated through the site.

Selected filmography

Discography

Debut Album due 2007.

External links

• All of the episodes of Season 1 of Instant Star and some of the episodes from Season 2 are now available in high-quality video and audio at: CTV's new Broadband Network (Look for the Broadband Network box on the upper right of the screen, where it says, "TV On Demand: Watch It Now!)
• Alexz Johnson Poland
• Alexz Johnson Web, #1 Fan Site
• Alexz Web Gallery
• Alexz Web Forums
• Alexz Johnson at the Internet Movie Database
• The Orange Record Label (Thanks to the Orange Record Label for biographical information incorporated into this article.)
• Capitol Records
• Interview
• Intant Star Tv Serie
• CTV Press Release, Dec. 12, 2005