Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, April 29, 1995 TAG: 9505020021
SECTION: SPECTATOR PAGE: S-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: HARRIET WINSLOW THE WASHINGTON POST
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
``A lot of child actors don't choose to go to college,'' she explained. ``I worked really, really hard, and my tutor was really great, and she knew I wanted to go here and she pushed me.''
Like many freshmen, Martin is figuring out when to study, when to squeeze in extracurricular activities and when to make time for her boyfriend, actor Scott Weinger, over at rival Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass.
But unlike most students, Martin is determined to keep up her professional acting career while she grows up on screen. No longer the teen-age Becca from ABC's ``Life Goes On,'' Martin has graduated to portraying young adults. Her prime-time series, CBS' ``Christy,'' recently returned, and she is making television movies every chance she gets.
Monday night she plays a young wife who exterminates her rat of a husband in ``If Someone Had Known,'' a movie airing on NBC (at 9 on WSLS-Channel 10).
For years Martin had dreamed of attending Yale, but not for its famous drama school.
``I was a freshman in high school when I heard [actress Jodie Foster] went there,'' she said, ``and ever since, I wanted to go.''
When Martin was accepted, she contacted Foster about postponing her acting career for college.
``I wrote Jodie a letter and asked her what made her decide to go here. She wrote me a letter back and said you have to do your own thing, you have to do what's right for you.'' Martin was thrilled, as the two have never met.
Foster shows that women can have power in Hollywood, said Martin. ``She takes risks, and I admire that so much.''
Martin has begun to feel at home in New Haven, although just now she is swamped with class work after extending her spring break to make ``If Someone Had Known.''
Martin realized that a young wife driven to stop the man she loved from hurting her made a powerful story.
``The battered-wife [film] was one that I was very excited about, because I think it's important,'' she said. ``It was pretty intense psychologically, and physically intense too. I did my own stunts - I was beaten all the time. I ended up with a lot of bruises. But when they said `Cut,' I didn't have to be a battered wife anymore.''
The movie also stars Kevin Dobson as her protective father and Ivan Sergei as her handsome, angry husband.
Martin was eager to take another acting job, although she had just finished filming ``Christy'' in Tennessee in December. ``I've become a neurotic actor,'' she said. ``I kind of took [the movie] to prove I could still do it.''
The spring-break production schedule caused Martin to miss a few days of class, plus rehearsals of an undergraduate stage play called ``Terra Nova.'' She is cast as an explorer's wife.
``I've only been to two rehearsals, but I catch on quick,'' she said.
She doesn't plan on taking acting classes. Instead, she may take screenwriting and is leaning toward majoring in English or art history.
But how could she go to Yale and not take an acting class?
``I'm afraid of the drama classes,'' she admitted. ``Learning Method acting might mess me up.''
Martin is allowed to say that, with a professional acting resume that includes four seasons on the ``Life Goes On'' series and now ``Christy,'' whose fate for the fall season will be announced in May.
In addition to ``If Someone Had Known,'' Martin will star in the movies ``The Face on the Milk Carton'' (airing May 24 on CBS) and ``When Summer Comes,'' which will shoot at semester's end. And she's the voice of Goofy's girlfriend in the just-released feature film, ``A Goofy Movie.''
So one minute the California native can think only of acting, and the next she is just another freshman, trying to figure out her young life. ``I think this is my finding-myself time. I didn't understand what that meant until the past couple of months.''
by CNB