Article from online TV Guide http://www.iguide.com/tv/magazine/961014/ftr2c.sml.
HER MAGIC TOUCH
Melissa Joan Hart explains it all: Between her new sitcom and her steady beau, she's never been happier
BY SUSAN SPILLMAN
Melissa Joan Hart seems to have taken a big swig of a potion designed to put your life in order. The 20-year-old actress conjures one perfect take after another on the set of her new comedy, Sabrina, the Teenage Witch (ABC, Fridays, 9 P.M./ET). In between, she plans a trip to Maui with a costar and exchanges a few smooches with her beau, who is visiting the set.
It's hard to believe that just two years ago, when Hart finished Nickelodeon's popular series Clarissa Explains It All (which now appears in reruns six days a week on Nickelodeon), she was ready to quit show business altogether. "I think I was too young to start doing a series," says Hart, who became Clarissa when she was just 14. To make matters worse, the native New Yorker, who began her career at age 4 with a Splashy bathtub-doll commercial, was separated from her family for weeks at a time, living with a guardian in Orlando, Florida, where the show was taped. Long hours added to the strain. "I worked more than the adults," she says. "My mom and my dad on the show would be like, 'Oh, I have to get out of here, I have tee-off time in an hour' and I'd be, 'Well, I have school for the next six hours.' It was hard work and I didn't want it anymore. I wanted to have fun."
In an attempt to have a more normal life, Hart decided to trade the cameras for the classroom. She enrolled in New York University, but days before her first semester began, ABC offered her a role in the TV-movie Family Reunion and she simply couldn't resist. "Making that movie helped me realize I do love acting," she says, "and that I didn't have to play Clarissa every time I acted."
To have more control over her career, Hart formed a production company, Hartbreak Films, with her mother, Paula, who's also an executive producer of Sabrina. "We're committed to family programming and are always looking for female roles that are strong, independent, and positive," says Paula. "Girls today need strong role models who are not disrespectful and crass. I don't like a lot of what's on TV today with kids using bad language and being disrespectful to their parents and teachers. We would not have Roseanne's kids' mouths on our show."
Indeed, 16-year-old Sabrina leads a very G-rated life. She lives with her two eccentric aunts (Beth Broderick and Caroline Rhea), who are charged with teaching her the finer points of sorcery. Like the hit '60s sitcom Bewitched, much of the humor comes from watching Sabrina's spells backfire. In one episode, for example, she tells the cranky infant she's babysitting to "be a big boy" and accidentally turns him into a fully grown man. What's different, says Paula, is that "Samantha had to use her magic on the sly, while Sabrina is encouraged by her aunts to use hers to the fullest." In the Halloween episode, which features a cameo from Sally Jesse Raphael, Sabrina wants to dress up as the talk-show host -- and her aunts help out by simply transforming her into Raphael. Later, when Sabrina is torn between attending a family function and a classmate's costume party, she clones herself so that she can be in both places at one time.
These days, unlike when she was filming Clarissa far away from her family, Hart no longer needs to dream about being two places at once in real life. She spends a great deal of time with her mother, stepfather, and five siblings, who now split their time between Los Angeles and New Jersey. "My mother and I are very close," she says. "We enjoy working together. We protect each other. She looks out for me and I look out for her." There's plenty of company at work, too. "I met the kids from Something So Right and Mr. Rhodes," says Hart, who will be the host of ABC Late Night Halloween Jam V on October 26. "Their dressing rooms are right across from our stage. We hang out and party together."
Even Hart's long-distance steady, James Fields, a 22-year-old University of Utah student, is in town these days. The two met in Salt Lake City shooting an episode of CBS's Touched by an Angel. They've had a commuting relationship for "a year and a half, a week, and a day," she says. But now, Fields, who recently taped bit parts in two upcoming Sabrina episodes -- in one he's a nerd, in the other, a yearbook photographer -- is considering an acting career and has decided to stay until the end of the year. Hart couldn't be happier. "I have friends here, my boyfriend is here, my family is here, I'm working," she says. "For the first time, I feel like my life is almost perfect."
Susan Spillman is a freelance writer who lives in Los Angeles.
Eric Last, November 8th 1996