10 Things You Didn't Know About RoboCop

8. Allen... It's You!

The role of Officer Lewis was originally given to Stephanie Zimbalist who is best known for playing Laura Holt in Remington Steele with Pearce Brosnan. She had to drop out when she was needed to film more episodes of the detective series and the role of Lewis passed to Nancy Allen. Strong female characters that are ''gender neutral'' are a running theme in most films by Paul Verhoeven and the same can be applied to Anne Lewis. Verhoeven asked Allen to cut her hair short to desexualise the character. When we first see Lewis, she is is wearing a helmet and beating up a suspect who is being uncooperative. The idea was that you don't know if the officer is male or female and when the helmet is removed, you see that that Lewis is female. Verhoeven didn't want her to have long flowing hair under the helmet and look like a typical Hollywood female lead.
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Child of the 80's. Brought up on Star Trek, Video Games and Schwarzenegger, my tastes evolved to encompass all things geeky.