‘Meatier Roles’ For a Tall Talent

There may be a backlash against Hollywood’s plethora of hooker roles for women, but Debbie Lee Carrington’s proved a career turning point. Her portrayal of gutsy prostitute Thumbelina--all 3 feet, 10 inches of her--in “Total Recall” gave the diminutive actress a chance to perform out of costume, against type and with some human dimension.

Now she’s about to start filming “Mom and Dad Save the World,” in which Teri Garr and Jeffrey Jones are beamed up to the planet of an evil ruler (played by Jon Lovitz). Carrington portrays a servant who befriends Garr.

Carrington has appeared in nearly 20 movies, but you may not have seen her face--she was a “two-headed geex” in Michael Jackson’s “Captain EO” and an Ewok in “Return of the Jedi,” among many costumed roles.

She’s also been used for what she terms “midget gags,” stereotypical, demeaning parts that she’s now “trying to steer away from.”

Carrington got the performing bug in the late 1970s while still in high school, when she appeared in a revue featuring Warner Bros. cartoon characters at Marriott’s Great America amusement park in Santa Clara. Majoring in child development at UC Davis, she took a quarter off to play a Munchkin in “Under the Rainbow” (1981). That led to “Return of the Jedi”--and a Hollywood career.

“It’s just in the last two years,” she says, “that I’ve begun to get meatier roles where I don’t have to be involved in special-effects makeup.”

A licensed aerobics trainer and stunt woman, she’s now shooting a segment of a new fall CBS series, “WIOU.” Her character, a professional anchorwoman, sends her audition tape--shot from the waist up--to TV station WIOU, which has an opening. Wowed by the tape, station executives send for her--and find out she stands only 3-foot-10.

“They debate whether to hire her, because of her size, which is kind of what I go through as an actress,” says Carrington.

The segment, she feels, “can educate the public about what little people can do. And it can enlighten writers and casting directors on the ways little people can be used in motion pictures and television, and the dimension it can give to a character.”