The Childlike Empress might have relied on the boy(s) in her life to give her a name, but Tami Stronach has no such identity crisis. The actor had no screen experience to speak of when she nabbed the role, and she explained to SlashFilm it was actually something of a "fluke" that she was offered the movie in the first place. Although she's had a few other credits since, Stronach's current occupation and passion is professional dancing. She studied dance in college and graduate school and now runs her own company in New York. Her decision to pursue a mostly non-Hollywood life was intentional.
"I really love dancing," Stronach explained. "I made a decision that I would throw myself into dance and that if I really missed acting, I would return to it as an adult when I was in charge of my life and I wasn't upsetting my parents, who both had really active full careers and couldn't just give over all their time to pursue being my manager." That's exactly what she did. Stronach ended up frequenting the stage for several years and helped develop the Paper Canoe Company, which performs plays across the country, when she started to miss the acting business.
In more recent years, she and her husband, Greg Steinbruner, have tapped into the growing nostalgia surrounding "The NeverEnding Story." This came about after Limahl's song from the film played a prominent part in an episode of "Stranger Things." The couple developed "Man and Witch: The Dance of a Thousand Steps," a throwback fantasy film that features many popular 1980s actors, including Sean Astin and Christopher Lloyd. "This film is full of nostalgia for fans of classic '80s fantasy," Stronach told Deadline ahead of the film's planned release in 2024.
