"Associated Press Article"
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Hart embraces her bewitching acting career By Frazier Moore, Associated Press writer NEW YORK -- When other girls went to Brownies, Melissa Joan Hart went to auditions, filmed TV commercials and landed stage roles alongside William Hurt and Martin Sheen. A few years later, when she got the title role in "Sabrina the Teenage Witch," Ms. Hart found much to identify with: a youngster trying to fit in but feeling somehow ... different.
"I had a lot of frustration when I was a teen-ager," says Ms. Hart, who technically is still a teen-ager for three more weeks, but you know what she means. "Everyone else was so cool and knew what to wear," she says, recalling life as an outsider in the Long Island town of Sayville. "I just had no clue. I didn't know what was wrong with me. I think a lot of that was also true of Sabrina." Based on the Archie Comics' character, this light-hearted and (literally) charming Showtime film finds Sabrina spending a year with her eccentric aunts in the fictional town of Riverdale. There she discovers her teen powers as a witch as she tries to make new friends at a new high school. "Sabrina" might be back this fall as a weekly series on the ABC schedule. It won't be Ms. Hart's first series, of course. For four years, she played the title character -- a precocious teen -- in Nickelodeon's "Clarissa Explains It All" (it's still seen in repeats every weekday). As for her stage appearances, she was in "The Crucible" on Broadway with Mr. Sheen and in a Circle Repertory production of "Beside Herself" with Mr. Hurt.
No wonder Ms. Hart can play teens that other teens (and their parents) love: Turned out for her interview in a peasant dress and sweater, she is pretty and perky, says "cool" a lot, and has a dusting of freckles across her nose. All the better, my dear, that she is playing a menace to society on her next project, a TV movie called "Twisted Desire," also starring Daniel Baldwin, that airs on NBC in May. "It's my first evil role," she says with satisfaction. "I start out as a sweet, innocent teen-ager like I usually play, and then my boyfriend breaks up with me. I get another boyfriend, but my parents don't want us to be together. So we plot to kill them." Ms. Hart seems exhilarated by this new twist in her career. After all, she's spent too many years serving double duty not only as an actress but also as a teen role-model. "Everyone thinks they know you from TV," she notes, "and then everyone's so shocked to learn that I have a belly ring and eight earrings." Which, now that she mentions it, she sure does. Yet, make no mistake, even with a bit of discreet body jewelry, Ms. Hart is no Courtney Love. "But people still criticize and judge you," Ms. Hart says, a bit bemused. "Someone called me 'Metallica'!" Maybe it's just another part of growing up, which currently finds her torn between a number of paths -- most notably school and career. Her enrollment at New York University has been on-again, off-again the past two years. Much of that absence has been due to work. But not all. "I was having a tough time at school," she admits. "I was overwhelmed. I couldn't talk in class at all. I was just a mess. I wasn't ready for it." Still, college is part of her plans. "I'm still doing a lot of exploring, kind of figuring myself out," she says, and thinks back to those days when, a bit lonely, she was starting the process. "I'm glad I didn't conform then. If I had known how to, I probably would have. But I didn't."
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