DIOCESAN NEWS
12/18/09
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Fifth grader shares personal side of `Princess’

By Fabvienen Taylor
    JACKSON — At the end of the first nine weeks of classes when report cards went out from St. Richard School, Elizabeth Dampier’s mother, Jeanna, went in for the usual parent/teacher conference.
    “She wanted to meet us and say hello,” said Krista Garrard, Elizabeth’s fifth-grade teacher.
    “During the conference I told her I loved to hear Elizabeth talk in class and read out loud. I told her Elizabeth had a very soothing, very good voice,” said Garrard, who hears over 100 voices a day at school.
    That was when Garrard discovered she was not the only one impressed with Elizabeth’s voice.
    “Elizabeth’s mother then told me, as a matter of fact, Elizabeth was in this movie, ‘The Princess and the Frog.’
    “I was very surprised and excited when she told me. That was in October. None of us knew about it until then. Her fourth-grade teacher may have known, but not me, or the fifth graders,” said Garrard.
    Elizabeth agreed, saying her parents had earlier encouraged her not to mention being in Disney’s “The Princess and the Frog,” now playing in theaters.
    “They told me don’t go around bragging about being in this movie,” said Elizabeth, 10, who started auditioning for the part about three years ago.
    “I said, ‘Yes ma’m.’ Later my mother told me I could start opening up about it.”
    “The Princess and the Frog” is an animated movie with Elizabeth as the voice of the Tiana character as a young child. The older Tiana is voiced by Anika Noni Rose;
    After its first release Friday - Sunday, Dec. 11-13, the movie earned $25 million making it the No. 1 ranking movie that weekend.
    Garrard described Elizabeth’s family as “very private. Elizabeth is a very humble child, a very good student, eager to please. She does not brag about herself at all.
    “She is very kind and sweet when people ask her to tell them about the movie’s premiere in Los Angeles, about the movie itself, about her experiences in commercials in the past,” said Garrard. “She is very gracious about it.”
    On Friday morning, Dec. 11, Elizabeth, her classmates, teacher and some of her friends from Madison St. Anthony School attended a special preview of the film at the Malco Grandview Theater in Madison.
    Morgan Sellers, 11, sat next to Elizabeth at the movie. Morgan was one of the first people Elizabeth told about being in the film.
    “I wanted to sit by her and cheer her on,” said Morgan. “I loved the movie and I told her she did a great job.”
    “For me it was a very good experience of New Orleans and how people do things down there,” said Morgan.
    As a matter of fact, New Orleans is special to Elizabeth. “I love it,” she said, “It’s my favorite place to go. I like the music and the beignets and the people. I love the way they talk (accent).”
    At one point, Elizabeth’s mother asked, if besides sharing a love of New Orleans with Tiana, whether Elizabeth noticed other ways they were alike.
    “So I sat down and talked to myself about it and decided yes, like her (Tiana), I work really hard to keep my grades up, I work really hard at home, we both like to cook and one day I want to have my own restaurant like Tiana,” she said.
    After the class viewed the movie, Garrard arranged for Elizabeth to answer her classmates’ questions that afternoon.
    They peppered her with questions about everything from how the Disney studio looked in New Orleans, to if she was ever at times nervous, to how it felt walking the red carpet and meeting people like Oprah Winfrey at the premiere in Los Angeles.
    Also, Elizabeth did a “show and tell” for her class with posters, t-shirts and other memorabilia from the movie.
    “She has had a very big, very exciting month. We’ve been very excited about it and so have her classmates,” said Garrard.
    “Elizabeth is a blessing. She’s a good kid to teach. It is really fun to come to work when you have kids like that who are eager to learn,” she said.
    Learning and earning good grades is a high priority on Elizabeth’s parents’ (Arthur and Jeanna Dampier) list of priorities.
    “We always make sure she stays focused first on her relationship with God, her relationship with her family and then her schoolwork,” said Jeanna Dampier.
    “(Elizabeth’s) acting and performing, we use not only as an outlet (for her) but, if her grades are not where they need to be, she definitely will not be performing. She knows that.”
    The Dampiers, 1988 graduates of St. Joseph School in Jackson, first noticed their daughter’s talent performing in school and church events at New Hope Church, where the family are members.
    From there they contacted a local agent, Sharon Ward in Clinton, who scheduled some acting classes and set up auditions. Elizabeth also took lessons in voice, piano and dance and appeared in commercials.
    Two of her younger siblings enjoy performing and have appeared in some commercials and a local television production.
    In the second grade, Elizabeth was enrolled in St. Richard. Her sister Olivia, 7, also attends school there.
    After auditioning and then being called back to audition two more times for “The Princess and the Frog,” Elizabeth landed the part in April 2008 of the younger Tiana, Disney’s first African American princess.
    “We emphasize with her it is a blessing and an honor for her to be selected to be a part of this movie, to be the first African American princess. Elizabeth understands the significance of it,” said Dampier.
    Elizabeth, Dampier said, is very disciplined. “She is very focused, very driven. But as a parent you have to monitor how much your child does. She does not take every audition and is not always doing things (performing). We make sure she stays fresh and current as far as her skills but we are not always pushing her for each and every thing because you can wear a child out,” said Dampier.
    The Dampiers keep a close eye on the content Elizabeth auditions for. “She enjoys it. She has aspirations outside of acting but she definitely wants to continue. And her classmates are very supportive of her and so are the people at New Hope.”
    While she may have a right to be a braggadocia after starring in an historical Disney film, that is not the case with Elizabeth, said Garrard.
    “She is not like that at all. She doesn’t appear to be fussy about her fame. She is true to her age,” Garrard said.
    The class has talked with Elizabeth about being on television, on the radio, in the news.
    “The other kids have been very kind and excited for her. I have not seen any jealousy.     They’ve just been encouraging.
    “But we’re like a family here,” Garrard said. “This fifth-grade class is very special. It is a very good class. We have a lot of really neat kids.
    “But Elizabeth is the total-package kid. She’s involved in her church, very kind, very smart and she has great dreams.”

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