| BIOGRAPHY
After spending the 1990s as a TV teen star, Melissa Joan Hart
set her sights on feature films.
Born and raised on Long Island, Hart began acting in TV commercials
as a child. She further honed her skills in New York theater in
the late '80s as the youngest member of the Circle Repertory Lab
Company. Hart then broke through as a cable TV favorite (and a
CableACE Award nominee) in the role of the precocious titular
preteen on the Nickelodeon series Clarissa Explains It All (1991-1994).
After the series ended, Hart moved to network TV stardom in 1996
as the supernaturally gifted title teen on Sabrina, the Teenage
Witch. Maintaining her pert primetime persona while revealing
her range, Hart also starred in several TV movies, including Family
Reunion: A Relative Nightmare (1995), Twisted Desire (1996), The
Right Connections (1997), and the college date rape drama Silencing
Mary (1998). Though Hart continued to produce and star in Sabrina,
she also attempted to parlay her TV fame into movie stardom with
the romantic comedy Drive Me Crazy (1999).
The film, however, failed to perform as well as the Britney Spears
tune that gave it its title. Hart raised eyebrows that same year
when she tried to shed her squeaky-clean adolescent image with
a racy photo spread and interview in men's magazine Maxim. Neither
gambit affected Sabrina, although Hart and the series moved from
the family-oriented ABC lineup to the youth-savvy WB in 2000. |
FILMOGRAPHY
• Backflash (2002)
• Not Another Teen Movie (2001)
• The Specials (2000)
• Drive Me Crazy (1999)
• Next to You (1999)
• The Right Connections (1997) |
