Interview with Anneliese

"It's about three women coming of age and their friendship: how it comes and goes and how time changes everything and how views and the world change these women," Anneliese says. "It's a chick flick and women, mothers and their daughters will really like it."

In "Vanities" Kennedy plays the wild Mary, Stiles is the straight-laced Joanne and Anneliese's Kathy falls somewhere in the middle.

"I'm the one who holds them together, who organizes everything and keeps the friendship going" Anneliese says of her character. She admits that she isn't organized and even sometimes runs late to appointments. Also unlike Kathy, she never cared about being a cheerleader. Friends were her focus.

"To be honest, I liked her the least when I auditioned," Anneliese said. "She was so opposite of myself. She cares about things that don't really matter in the big sense."

Anneliese's best friends are her sisters, Sarah van der Pol, an actress living in London, and Rachel van der Pol, an artist in Los Angeles. Sarah is the one who makes the phone calls and keeps the connection among the sisters. She is also the person who inspired Anneliese to become an actress.

"I was lucky I could sing at a young age and was able to book things," Anneliese says.

But she also worked. Anneliese also learned responsibility by working in the cafeteria while she attended Bellflower High School.

"It was good for me," she said. "I was making no money, $2 an hour or something ridiculous like that. I'd have to wake up at 4:30 and I had to be there at 6 and I'd work for an hour and a half and I'd start school at 7:30. I made cinnamon rolls and cheese bread and served the kids."

Later, she went to the Orange County High School of the Arts, although she was often on the road touring in various productions. Anneliese ended up leaving school early to do That's So Raven, but attended Cypress College for general studies.

Van der Pol said Disney treated her well and provided her with a lot of experience, but perhaps not quite what she needed for Vanities.

"The biggest challenge is that I'm 23 and in the third scene I'm 28 and then I play a 44-year-old," she said. "It's a challenge to really seem genuine in each of these ages, to not play a too-old 44-year-old or a too-young 16-year-old."

The cast ages by changing their clothes and hairstyles while on stage. They also have to move the sets, often while singing. And the songs - all three-part harmonies - aren't easy.

"You can't fake it," van der Pol said. "You don't have 60 people behind you."

But van der Pol is thrilled to be on stage at the Pasadena Playhouse, as she attended many shows there as a child. She is also pleased to be working with Judith Ivey and has become close with her co-stars, Kennedy and Stiles.

"In this business they say it's hard to find good friends, but I feel like I've found two really cool friends," van der Pol said.

After the show closes, van der Pol will take a break until January, when rehearsals begin for the production's stint in New York. She hopes that by doing "Vanities" in the Big Apple, she will build more credibility and get further theater opportunities. Van der Pol would also like to do more television and a movie, preferably a drama.

"Vanities is an interesting musical," she said. "I get the best song in the whole show."

The tune she is referring to is her solo, Cute Boys With Short Haircuts. Does the song descibe her real-life boyfriend?

"He's really cute and he is a short-haired guy," van der Pol said. "I guess I think of him when I sing it, although I'm happy right now with him, and Kathy's not so happy when she's singing it. But it's sweet."

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Posted on 30 Sep 2008 by Sofia