Melissa Joan Hart: Witchy Woman

As long as we're talking boys, is it true that she and Adrian Grenier had sparks offscreen? "We had a little 'thing' in the beginning," she admits with a grin, "but that happened more because of the characters we were playing. Adrian is wonderful and so sexy, and I love and respect him, but we would never be together. We're friends now, though." Hart stares off a moment, then continues, "That set was a soap opera, a total Peyton Place. You can see a lot of chemistry in this movie because four couples actually came out of it and two of them are still going strong." And did one of the non-permanent couples--she and Grenier--make any notable contributions to the annals of this particular Peyton Place?

She giggles and tells me of a tryst that occurred in a broom closet on the set. "Everyone was around, including the people who owned the house where we were shooting," she laughs. "We kind of went in there, got stuck and couldn't get out very easily, so that's how everybody knew what happened. It's weird because I don't usually get a vibe off actors. It's usually with musicians. Like, I met the members of Smashing Pumpkins when I did a Conan O'Brien and, the other day, I talked to Billy Corgan about doing the Next to You soundtrack."

And now for the big question--does she worry about her chances on the big screen if Next to You tanks? "If it doesn't work out, I'll work my ass off to get another part to prove myself. My next step will be to take things further, maybe do something people don't even want to see me in. There's a heroin movie I'd love to do, in which I'd play a nice girl who happens to be addicted. I'd love to play the darker side of a good person. But, then again, no one's going to buy me right away as a bad girl."

Maybe not, but that hasn't kept Hart from going out tirelessly on auditions. When I rattle off a few I've heard about, she interrupts and says, "Auditions are a whole different sport than acting. I hate them and I suck at them. Like, I had to eat an apple while saying lines for Lolita--I was too embarrassed to give anything but a bad audition. I auditioned for Scream, even though I don't think I was seriously in the running. When I was asked to audition for Urban Legend and I Know What You Did Last Summer, I didn't want to because there was no way they were going to improve on or duplicate Scream. Go would have been a good step, but they'd already cast it when I went in. I auditioned for Election, thinking, 'Whoa, this is a weird one.' I didn't like the script for Pleasantville, so I wouldn't go in. I was pushed to read with Kirsten Dunst for Drop Dead Gorgeous, a role I didn't understand or want anything to do with. They really wanted to like me, but they were disappointed and I cried my eyes out after that, it was so bad. But with The Mod Squad--the first script, not the final version--and with a Fox 2000 project Leelee Sobieski just got called Here on Earth, I thought, 'Who do I have to blow to get this?'"

Though Hart lets out a merry laugh to let me know she's just kidding, I can't help wondering how playful this girl would get to land a role. Or how competitive she could become.

"Competition is fierce among actors my age," she says, not kidding now. "There's no way I'd say I belonged in the room with Denise Richards or Catherine Zeta-Jones, but Jennifer Love Hewitt or Sarah Michelle Gellar, who get offered many more things than I do-- why not?"

Since her production company has had trouble getting some of its more offbeat projects off the ground--a small, touching Aldous Huxley/Christopher Isherwood script, for example--does she worry that part of the problem may be that Hollywood hasn't seen her playing much more than a girl whose biggest problem is getting hassled by bitchy high school girls? "I do and don't see Sabrina as a straitjacket. But these days my mind is in a no-fear mode--like in that Baz Luhrmann song," she says, referring to "Everybody's Free (To Wear Sunscreen)," the William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet director's wildly popular agglomeration of cliches and tongue-in-cheek homilies set to a percolating New Age riff. "A line in it says, 'Do one thing every day that scares you.' I've been doing that, taking this attitude where I'm like, anything that comes my way I can handle. Bring it on. For example, studying with an acting coach for the first time in my life was a big fear because acting can be like lying, and I'm not a good liar."

Jitters after nearly two decades in showbiz? "It doesn't work that way," Hart laughs. "It was less scary acting on Broadway, which is real acting, than it was acting for the drama club at school. I freaked out once trying out for a school play and I was terrible. The idea of acting in front of kids who would glare at you later in the hallway or shove you into a locker was terrifying."

What was it like balancing a high-profile job with the social terrors of early teen years? "I know it isn't most people's experience to be doing commercials when you're in elementary school," she admits, "but acting was just something I did on the side, after Girl Scouts or roller-skating. I know it's not like everyone's life to be starring in a TV series like Clarissa, living in Florida away from your family and having your very best friends be a bunch of older people. I so wanted to be around kids my age, but when I was, I acted weird. If a girl came on the show, I'd spend days trying to latch on to her, arranging slumber parties, doing miniature golf. By Thursday, I'd be like, 'What am I doing? I don't even know this person.' Even now when I'm around kids my age, I get self-conscious. I used to have some really strange trust issues. I couldn't even get into an elevator if there was a guy in there by himself. I'd walk the stairs instead." After a moment, she says, unsmilingly, "If I had a kid, I wouldn't want them to act when they were young."

Among Hart's many interviews, there's an "at home" piece that clearly shows on one of her walls a poster from the 1982 Jessica Lange movie Frances, which chronicled the tortured life of a gifted '30s blonde whose ascent to Hollywood stardom was snuffed by her politics, her inner demons and her poisonous relationship with a mother who had her institutionalized and, finally, lobotomized. It makes me wonder what type of relationship Hart has with her mother. Until making it herself, Hart grew up without frills, to say the least--in a one-bedroom house with five other siblings, whose names are Trisha (now 21 and in college), Elizabeth (18, in college and an occasional Sabrina guest star), Brian (15 and another Sabrina guest star) and Emily (13 and yet another occasional Sabrina guest star). "I would die for anyone in my family," Hart says. "And I'm a complete mama's girl. I can't even buy a sofa, let alone pick a project, unless I ask my mother's opinion first."

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