Melissa Joan Hart has built up a massive young following as the immensely likable girl next door she plays on Sabrina, the Teenage Witch. But now as she hits the big screen in Next to You, Hart is letting it be known that she, like Sabrina, is not exactly what she seems.
____________________________________
Melissa Joan Hart is one very big star. Even if you've never heard of her. She'd be the first to admit the possibility that you might not have become acquainted with her screen alter ego, the charming, vanilla-sexy, teen-angst-riddled heroine of ABC's Sabrina, the Teenage Witch. After all, the witty, smartly packaged series, which has been renewed for a fourth season, has held a target demographic of preteen and teenage girls. And yet chances are you know exactly who Hart is, since her appeal spreads well beyond that of other three-named TV girls. Her deft comic timing and all-American accessibility on Sabrina have managed to pull in twentysomethings, parents and guys of all ages. It's like some brilliant genetic engineer spliced the genes of adorable Sandra Dee with no-guff, early Jodie Foster, and the result is a character that constitutes a beloved "guilty pleasure" for a vast population of non-teens. Sabrina is a parentless witch whose only guidance comes from two nutty, throw-caution-to-the-wind aunts and a sardonic talking cat. You're right if you think the setup sounds like a formula for camp, but Hart supplies the heart that keeps the show from serious silliness.
Though most TV stars as successful as Melissa Joan Hart have long since made the leap to the big screen, Hart is only now attempting the feat in the romantic comedy Next to You. The delay is understandable. The network, having captured lightning in a bottle, has paid Hart by the truck-load to star in highly watched Sabrina TV movies (last year, it was Sabrina Goes to Rome, this year, it'll be Sabrina Down Under) as well as in non- Sabrina TV movies like Twisted Desire, Two Came Back and Silencing Mary. What's more, her popularity has spun its own profitable web of Melissa Joan Hart-related tie-in books, games, an upcoming animated Sabrina TV series and a Sabrina soundtrack on which she gamely covers Blondie's "One Way or Another." Even a feature Sabrina movie is brewing. In fact, Hart has marshaled so much cumulative clout as a young witch that she, with her mother, Paula, who executive produces the show, now run Hartbreak Films, a company with over 40 TV and film projects on the fire.
What's behind this girl-with-cat phenomenon? Many lives. At 23, Hart is the product of nearly 20 years of showbiz experience. Born to a housewife mom and lobster-wholesaler father and raised in Sayville, Long Island, she announced at age four that she wanted to be on TV. Her parents took her so seriously they escorted her to Manhattan auditions for TV commercials, which led to scads of TV ads on which Hart extolled the wonders of products like Rice Krispies and Splashy bathtub toys. The next step was Broadway, where child Melissa starred in The Crucible _ opposite Martin Sheen, and the prestigious Circle Repertory Lab Company's production of Beside Herself opposite William Hurt. Then, at age 13, Hart was cast in the title role of Nickelodeon's hit series _Clarissa Explains It All, which kept her busy for four years, during which she relocated to Florida sans family. Her massive fan base from playing the do-gooding, problem-solving Clarissa made her the obvious choice to play the do-gooding, problem-solving Sabrina for ABC, for which she moved to L.A. with her family.
When Hart arrives to meet me in a crowded Studio City deli, her presence sparks an appreciative, friendly stir of recognition and murmuring among fellow diners. As we park ourselves and order massive lunches, I note right away that she's a revved-up, mile-a-minute talker and an infectious giggler who hardly has to work at being likable and wouldn't anyway. When she jingles her charm bracelet, which is inscribed with the names of her best girlfriends, or gleefully reveals her silly nicknames ("Smelly Melly" and "Smell-A-Licious") or lists Britney Spears as a "guilty pleasure," you could mistake her for a carefree, everyday twentysomething--except you already know that underneath that playfulness is a sharp, seasoned professional with her eye fixed firmly on the prize. You could also mistake her for a guileless innocent. Whatever you imagine, she's not the girl you think she is. And she's certainly not Sabrina.
I start out by asking Hart why, except for a bit part in the Jennifer Love Hewitt-vehicle Can't Hardly Wait, she's confined herself to the small screen. She shoots me an "Are you kidding?" look and says, "Well, you make three times as much money doing TV movies as you do in features. A lot of offers get thrown at you when you're in a hit TV series--I had a taste of that when I was younger and doing 'Clarissa Explains It All.' I didn't dive into movies then and I don't want to now, either. If there was a movie script out there I really believed in, that I was available to do and that the producers wanted me for, I'd be doing it. But I'm doing Sabrina Down Under now instead, because I get to go to Australia for a couple of weeks with my very best friends who work on the show, and because the script has mermaids in it--which I love--and because I get a feature film deal with Disney for doing it, and because it allows me to buy myself another piece of art."
Another piece of art? "You see," Hart tells me, full of surprises, "my life goals have been to travel and to learn as much as I can. Two summers ago, I took off with some of my girlfriends to Florence. No work at all, just totally submerging myself in the culture--besides learning to say 'Basta!' ('Enough!') to guys there who are very touchy-feely. Florence is all about art. And when I went to three or four exhibits in Venice, I fell in love with Picasso, and now I have four Picassos. Now that I'm going to Australia to do this movie, I'm going to buy myself another great piece. If a van Gogh or a Chagall were available for sale, I'd be really excited."
Do a movie, buy a masterpiece. Sounds like a smart way to handle rising career fortunes. But since the attempt to move from TV to movies is inevitable, what's her strategy? "It's all about taking small steps, not running," says Hart. And yet her first small step isn't really that small. Hart has to carry Next to You, a high school comedy about former best friends who've grown apart. She's the friend who's become one of the popular kids, and newcomer Adrian Grenier plays the boy who's turned into a rebellious misfit, but somehow they manage to hook up again. In the twinkly tradition of screen ingenues warming up for something meatier, Hart play-acts being in love and gets to do a drunk scene. "It's a great first movie for me because it's the kind of movie people expect me to make," She comments. "Plus, I'm really proud of it."
Then she scrunches her face and admits, "I've already been trying to deal with what's going to happen if I get bad reviews. On an acting scale of one to ten, I'd say I'm like a four or five. I was really disappointed with my acting during the first 20 minutes of the film. But I was happier with my work in the later, bigger scenes, like when I play drunk, which lasted about an eighth of the movie. One of my guilty pleasures is gin and tonics--I love them! But, on the movie, it was just me and my acting teacher getting me through it. The big compliment was that everyone on the movie kept saying, 'Are you really drunk?'" Hart sounds especially enthusiastic when discussing some of her young male costars, whom she ticks off her fingers. "Adrian [Grenier] is very good-looking and touching in it." Besides Grenier, there's Chris Park, "a great talent and a wonderful person," not to ignore Mark Webber, who's "adorable, talented and a star boy in the making. He's the next Leonardo DiCaprio."
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."
Unlike Frances Farmer's mother, Hart's is a well-liked, relatively low-key presence around Hollywood. "We couldn't be closer now," Hart says, "though there were four crucial years when mom and I weren't really very close. When I was 14 and in Florida doing Clarissa Explains It All, she was going through a divorce with my father after 25 years of marriage. My brother and one of my sisters were in New York with my dad, and my mother was with my other sister, who was doing Meet Me in St. Louis on a cruise ship. Mom moved us to a little townhouse in Manhattan, a city I hated at the time, and I blamed her. She'd go out dancing every night and I had to take care of the kids. There were some tough things I had to deal with, with my mother going through an early midlife crisis. I resented her for the responsibility I had to take. Still, I trusted her and loved her unconditionally." Hart says she's also remained close to her father, who, like her mother, has subsequently remarried.
So if Hart gets along fine with her mom, what about Frances Farmer does she relate to? "You know the moment when the hair-and-makeup woman is brushing Frances's hair and Frances just turns around and belts her?" she asks, with a crooked grin. "Do you want to know how many times I've felt like that? Not to my hairdresser, whom I adore and who will be godmother to my firstborn, but to other people on sets. Most of the time when you're making movies and doing TV, you just feel used." Hart flashes a devilish smile and continues, "I love the part in the film when Frances goes back to her home town and says to a woman who presents her with an award, 'Aren't you the same woman who told me I was going straight to hell?' One time when I went back home I went out to a bar with my dad and I saw some people who'd never been nice to me, and now were acting that way. After a drink or two, when I had a little more courage, I went over and said, 'Don't you remember saying this and that to me? And now you're pretending you're my best friend?' It was a little Frances moment."
Speaking of Frances moments, Hart's longtime friend Calista Flockhart, whom she met a decade ago when they acted together at the Circle Repertory Lab Company, appears to be living out a few of her own. "She's getting torn apart for her body," Hart comments. "I can show you pictures of her when she was my age and she was skinny-skinny then. The best thing I can think of, saying it in a nice way, is that she's neurotic. Her mind works really fast. I really value her friendship--she was like a sister to me--especially because it's harder to make friends with girls than with guys. Girls can be so catty and back-stabbing."
What about guys, then? "Well, a couple of months ago, I broke up with the guy I was living with and going with for almost six years," Hart says, alluding to her relationship with James Fields, a guy two years her senior who was a University of Utah business major when she met him, but moved to L.A. to be with her. She describes Fields as "my best friend and the first boyfriend I ever had who wasn't tall and Italian like John Travolta in Grease," but tales of their rockier times together widened their rift. "Part of the problem was that I'm a pretty open person," says Hart. "There are no big secrets in my family. There are things that happened between me and James that I could have kept private, I guess. But, like, if I have good sex, then the next day I'm going to tell everyone I know about it. Everyone. When I told people about the fights, the hang ups on the phone, the sex, it wasn't to hurt him, it's just how I deal with things. I say things out loud, hear them back and if someone gives me valid advice, well, that's my therapy."
Did the imbalance between their fame and financial status help topple things? "It didn't seem to bother him so much in the beginning, when he was just so proud of me," she recalls. "If anyone wanted to take pictures of me, he'd always step aside, but I'd drag him in, saying, 'I want pictures of us both!' Then, all of a sudden, he wanted to be an actor. Last year, we did the Sabrina movie together in Rome and that was a hard trip, for a lot of reasons. It seemed then it was kind of hard for him that the girl was bringing in the paycheck. It's terrible to say, but I think that might have gotten in the way. We tried to stay apart for awhile, but then we'd constantly call each other with, 'I miss you. Let's see what happens.' Until very recently, it was a 'We'll-get-back-together thing,' but now it's 'That's it, it's over.' I don't want to feel I have to bring him with me to Australia while I shoot the new Sabrina TV movie. I want to be me for awhile, not me and someone. I'm meeting a lot of people and dating. I'm really happy. And I'm having fun."
The way she says "fun" makes me think perhaps she's having fun with someone else. She laughs coyly and says, "I've got a crush. A definite, major crush." On whom? "He's a race-car driver, 21," she says and, though she won't confirm it, one hears he's not only a star in the pro-racing circuit, but also the very good-looking son of a celebrity participant in this past April's Pro/Celebrity Race at the Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach. When I try to tease out a few more pertinent details, she turns crimson. "It's really exciting to find someone who's got something else going on for him, who has a life, and who makes a good living doing something he loves. I can go watch his races, be proud of him and what he's doing and it doesn't affect me or my business.
"I've been growing up this last year," she continues, appearing less antsy for the moment. "The show is finally on its own and doing OK. I got my production company going. Everything's falling into place. I had my wisdom teeth removed and now I notice angles in my face. I'm becoming more physically active again. I'm having fun. When I turned 23 I had a big birthday party with about 100 people all on roller skates. I wore a little tube top and hot-pants disco outfit. Very Rollergirl, you know?"
So what's her forecast for the future? "It's time for me to do more of my No-Fear things," she announces with absolute determination. "My goal is to finish two more seasons of Sabrina, some of which I'm going to direct, then go to New York and complete two years of college while doing a play at night, because stage terrifies me now. It's also time for me to do my No Fear physical stuff like race-car driving and snowboarding. This is the first year I've felt confident doing lots of things. I guess I've finally become an adult."
____________________________________
Stephen Rebello interviewed Demise Richards for the July 99 issue of Movieline.