After spending two years on the WB's soon-to-be-expelled college drama Felicity, Amy Jo Johnson has weathered her fair share of angst. But last Thursday, the 31-year-old actress-singer got a real-life anxiety attack when she discovered a burglar in her Manhattan pad.
"I woke up and found a huge man staring at me above my bed," Johnson recalls to TV Guide Online. "I ran out the door and got a cop." By the time they returned, however, the thief had already made off with her laptop computer. "It's just annoying more than anything. I'm really happy that I'm okay and he wasn't here to hurt me, [but] it's very inconvenient."
Indeed, the intruder couldn't have picked a worse time to disrupt Johnson's life: Less than 24 hours later, the erstwhile Power Ranger was slated to debut as rock icon Janis Joplin in the off-Broadway musical Love, Janis. "I had so much work that I needed to do this morning," she lamented at the time. "I've just been laying here [in my apartment] trying to get some rest." (Opening night went off without a hitch, her rep later assured us.)
Tonight, Johnson is caught up in a different, more welcome type of melodrama — the fake kind; she reprises her Felicity role as onetime coed Julie Emrick for the first of two episodes. Her character — whose comeback is tied to Felicity's (Keri Russell) recent time warp — finds herself in yet another romantic predicament involving Sean (Greg Grunberg) and Ben (Scott Speedman).
Hey, speaking of going back in time, we're curious: What's the real reason Johnson was written off of Felicity two years ago? "I asked to leave," she says. "During the second year, I didn't feel like I really had a lot to do on the show and I really wanted to record an album with my friend, so I went to [series creator] J.J. Abrams and said, 'I think I'm ready to go.' I think he understood that I was a little bored."
