Whatever happened to Amy Jo Johnson?

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In 1993, Mighty Morphin Power Rangers burst onto American televisions where it immediately became a ratings sensation for Fox Kids and a pop culture phenomenon that only intensified young audiences' already growing hunger for Japanese-inspired entertainment. The show featured a team of colorful, live-action Rangers who used acrobatic martial arts, futuristic weaponry, and robotic dinosaurs to battle Godzilla-sized monsters for the fate of the world. In her very first acting debut, Amy Jo Johnson played Kimberly Hart, the Pink Ranger, which instantly catapulted her to superstar fame. But after three seasons and two movies, Amy Jo Johnson walked away at the height of Power Rangers mania. Why would she do that? What did she do next? We've got the answers.

J.J. Abrams hand-picked her to star in Felicity

After making the difficult decision to leave Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, Johnson bounced around in a few TV movies before auditioning for The WB drama Felicity in 1998. According to Johnson, she landed the role of Julie Emrick, a singer/songwriter who quickly becomes the best friend to Keri Russell's Felicity, after show-creator J.J. Abrams spotted her heading for the bathroom. Which sounds creepy to us, but that's Hollywood, right? "J.J. told me that when I walked by the room to go to the bathroom, and they saw me while they were auditioning people for Julie… Before I even came into the room, he's like, 'Oh! There she is. There's Julie.' Like, he already knew. He saw me and he's like, "There she is." So I thought that was kind of cool."

Despite being one of the original cast members, Johnson would eventually leave Felicity after just two seasons. At the time, Abrams would tell TV Guide that he made a difficult decision to cut Johnson from the show. "I felt like in a weird way we were wasting Amy Jo's time. She's an incredibly gifted actress, but she wasn't getting enough stuff to do. I wish we had enough money and time to focus on all of the characters. But the way the stories were going, I thought it was more fair to let Amy Jo [go]." Clearly, there were no hard feelings between the former Power Rangers star and Abrams as Johnson was more than happy to return as Julie for the final four episodes of Felicity. However, her reasons were leaving the show would differ from the version Abrams told TV Guide.

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