Bonnie Trenga, Mesa, Ariz.
“They did a very good job reimagining the story for 2010,” says Macchio, 51. “It’s a great story, and they followed the story, but it’s a very different movie. I worried it would taint the legacy of the original, but it enhanced it.” Since The Karate Kid cemented his stardom in 1984, Macchio has been working steadily, if unspectacularly. He had a turn on Dancing With the Stars, appears as a dance-studio owner in the Lifetime movie Holiday Spin (airing Sunday), and plays Joe Stefano, the young screenwriter of Psycho, in the Alfred Hitchcock biopic Hitchcock (in theaters Friday and featuring Anthony Hopkins as the film legend). Stefano “had issues with sex, rage and his mother,” Macchio says, “and he visited a shrink almost every day. When Hitchcock heard that, he said, ‘This is the guy to write the movie.’”
Contributing: Nancy Mills, Brian Truitt
