| Nancy Churnin: Quan gets her shot with 'Rugrats' Playing Kimi in the animated film gave actress a thrill 03/27/2001 By / The Dallas Morning News Dionne Quan, 22, has wanted to act for as long as she can remember.
She put a hold on her first love – musical theater – when too many casting directors discouraged her because she was Asian. And blind. Then she discovered animation.
Ms. Quan is the voice of Kimi in Rugrats in Paris: The Movie, which releases this week ($14.95 video, $22.95 DVD; rated G). She bested 147 competitors for the role of the spunky little girl in cowboy boots whose mother marries Chuckie's dad.
"It's a tremendous amount of freedom that I get to act with my voice and not worry about my gestures," she says by phone from her home in Benecia, Calif.
Ms. Quan has been blind since birth due to underdeveloped optic nerves. She can only distinguish a few colors and objects.
Her parents were "incredibly supportive of anything I wanted to try," Ms. Quan says. "I've got the most wonderful parents. I'm really lucky."
She got her first job on a commercial when she was 14. Since then, she has done voices for The Wild Thornberries, The Book of Virtues and Cow and Chicken.
Getting the part of Kimi was a particular thrill, she says, because she has always been a Rugrats fan. "It was a dream. I always wanted to be a part of it."
Now, as the part of Kimi has been incorporated into the weekly Rugrats series, Ms. Quan types scripts on her Braille typewriter as her mother reads them to her. Then she practices her lines during the flights to the tapings.
The producers adjust the microphone so that it won't pick up the soft sound of her finger running across the raised letters as she reads.
Ms. Quan lives with her parents but has been studying for her next big move: living on her own in Los Angeles. She's found a place. She's studied travel, cooking, cleaning and computer skills. Her mother plans to help her get used to things in the beginning.
While she doesn't think she is as fearless as Kimi, she says she's learned a lot from her character's unstoppable personality.
"If you really want to do something, you should follow that dream and do it," she says.
Lettuce entertain you
Rugrats was not the first children's television series to make the leap to features (remember the Muppets movies?) and it certainly won't be the last, as Disney's Recess still struggles to make its mark in theaters.
Now VeggieTales, the popular values-added video series about talking (and singing and dancing) vegetables, has announced its bid for the big screen.
Jonah: A VeggieTales Movie, inspired by the biblical story of Jonah, has set its goal on a 2002 release. The CGI-animated film is written and directed by Phil Vischer and Mike Nawrocki, the co-creators of the series who also perform many of the voices.
You can see a tiny snippet of Jonah on VeggieTales' latest direct-to-video, Lyle, the Kindly Viking, which sails simultaneously to mass-market and Christian bookstores Tuesday (video $12.99; DVD $14.99; not rated).
The likable Lyle, while not based on a biblical story, stays true to the VeggieTales mission of teaching children values in a funny and affecting way. Junior Asparagus stars as a Viking who wants more out of life than plundering. Or, rather, he wants less – he wants to take the Vikings' ill-gotten gains and share them with others.
Also of note
For some kids, there's nothing like the real thing. And for kids like that, there's nothing like Little Tug's Big Adventure, a live-action, 30-minute video for ages 2 to 6 about a tugboat who saves his friend Rita the Speedboat from troubled waters. Call 1-888-TUGS-R-US.
Learning starts earlier and earlier with the So Smart! series from The Baby School Company. The colorful educational videos, aimed at ages 3 months to 4 years, include Shapes, Letters, Musical Instruments and Spanish. Call 1-800-663-2741 or check out the Web site (www.sosmart.com).
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