Tami Stronach explains why it was a ‘no brainer’ to leave Hollywood after making her film debut in ‘The NeverEnding Story’

When Tami Stronach was 10 years old, she fascinated young audiences as the Child Empress in 1984. The never-ending story. It was his first and last major role in a feature film – so far.

Exactly 40 years after the cult film, Stronach returns to the big screen in another fantasy film, Man and Witch: The Dance of a Thousand Steps. She plays the Witch in a cast that includes Christopher Lloyd, Sean Astin, Michael Emerson and her husband, Greg Steinbruner, who wrote the script and plays the Goat Herder.

“It’s completely insane to go back to film at age 50 as a woman,” Stronach told Yahoo Entertainment. “It’s like everything in our society is telling you that’s the wrong attitude – but that’s the attitude I’m taking,” she laughs.

It took four years to make Man and Witch, which opens in theaters on July 28th and 30th – as well as a little push from her husband. Stronach left Hollywood as soon as she got ahead. She later became a modern dance performer and choreographer. She founded her own dance company in 2000 and co-founded (with Steinbruner) the entertainment studio Paper Canoe Company, which creates family-friendly content for stage and screen, 10 years ago when her daughter, Maya, was born. (Maya also has a role Man and Witch.)

“I was acting, but I wasn’t acting in films,” Stronach explained. “It was really my husband. He said, ‘Don’t you think you should just do one more movie on your bucket list?’ I said why? We have our life and all our projects.’ He said, ‘Let’s make a 10-minute short.’ I said, ‘OK, this is going to be fun.’ Then the short became a feature film script that was given to me on my birthday. It was a very romantic gift – and a challenge.” (Stronach also made a cameo in the 2018 film Ultra Low).

Stronach incorporated his dancing experience into the film, which sees the Goat Shepherd turning to the Witch to reverse a spell placed on him that prevented him from finding true love. She also serves as executive producer.

“It was a tremendous learning curve,” she said. “In addition to the wonder of being able to return to film, in a script that I loved, with my family, a wonderful director and cast, I was also able to grow as a person” by being a producer and being able to “keep the female characters and make sure I felt that they were progressive and reflected our times. It’s a nostalgic film from the 80s, but we need our [strong] female characters in 2024.”

Making films today compared to 1984 are experiences that are worlds apart. The daughter of two archaeologists, Stronach was just a kid in San Francisco musical theater when a casting director scouted her and she landed in Wolfgang Petersenin The never ending story. She spent the summer in Bavaria, southeast Germany, during the three-month shoot, living in a hotel with her young co-stars Noah Hathaway (Atreyu) and Barret Oliver (Bastian). They swam in the pool together, ran up and down elevators, and knocked on each other’s doors. It was like summer camp for Hollywood child stars.

She loved the “magical world” Petersen created for Michael Ende’s book-turned-film, set in Fantasy with Falkor, the luck dragon and a search for Auryn’s locket, but knows her experience on set wouldn’t fly today.

“I don’t think it was possible to do what we did back then with the child labor laws and everything,” Stronach said. “We were on set 10 hours a day. We were there all day. I mean – I loved it. I wandered around the different rooms and talked to the makeup artists. The stuntman and I became friends. I hung out a lot with the behind-the-scenes artistic team and they took me to English breweries. I couldn’t drink beer because I was 10 years old, but they taught me tricks. I can do all these rollercoaster tricks from spending so much time at the beer gardens with the crew. The never ending story.”

Stronach was practically a child, even losing teeth – prominent incisors – during filming. Petersen “wasn’t happy about it at all,” she recalls with a laugh.

She spent two weeks in a dentist’s chair to create dentures to cover her existing teeth. The prosthetic “looked really weird,” she said. “If you stop and pause, you will see the dentures.” It also caused her to have a lisp. Fortunately, at the end of filming, his adult teeth broke out and the dentures were discarded.

“My teeth grew long enough that Wolfgang said, ‘Don’t smile. Have a calm and serious face. If you have to smile, just your lips, [no teeth]’” she recalled. “My husband, who is also a director, said to me, ‘I think Wolfgang telling you not to smile to cover those teeth was actually an interesting guideline. It kind of created a restraint – his face doesn’t move much – and gives it a seriousness. I’m like: Yeah, so mysterious, so serious — and really just trying to hide my teeth.”

Stronach’s academic parents “were so ill-prepared” for his overnight stardom, which included the release of a pop album, Fairy Queen (recorded in one day while in Germany for the film trip).

“We really had no idea,” she said. “We were surprised at every step – surprised by the reach of it when we arrived,” not realizing it was the most expensive film ever produced in Germany at the time, “surprised by the reach of it once it was released, surprised by the stickiness. ”

This brought unwanted attention to Stronach, who returned to California to resume school. Men camped outside his house. She received marriage proposals and offers for roles in nude films. These incidents influenced his family’s decision to stop his Hollywood career as soon as it began.

It was clear: “Here is the door you can walk through – and you will have to navigate a lot of it – or wait until you are 18 and see what you feel like doing,” she said. “It seemed obvious to be honest with you. I really threw myself into dancing and continued acting [in theater] so I didn’t necessarily feel like my creativity was cut off. It was like: if you want to make movies, you would do it as an adult.”

When he reached adulthood, “It’s so hard to get off the dance bandwagon. There’s nothing more fun, but eventually your body just breaks down,” Stronach laughed. “I always had in mind that I would eventually return to acting. I still participated in plays constantly throughout my dance life. When my daughter was born, my husband and I started doing more theater. He’s starting to call me.

She couldn’t help but give signs of encouragement along the way as she began to test the waters. The theme song “NeverEnding Story” appeared in a 2019 episode of Weird stuff. The show’s Millie Bobby Brown turned it into a viral dance challenge. Then a Spotify ad – featuring a Falkor – appeared on a billboard outside her house.

“It was like: what is happening? It disappeared from my life for 30 years and then suddenly it was everywhere,” she said. Everything became “another finger on my back: Come on, Tami. Take a risk. Make the movie.“Now, here she is.