NEW YORK -- 'Gimme A Break' star Lauri Hendler has been working since she was less than a year old and if she has it her way, she'll never retire.
'Sure there are things I missed out on, but nothing I miss,' the 18-year-old actress said. 'Everyone has to make decisions in life. You can't do everything.'
Always a top-notch student at Beverly Hills High School -- she was a National Merit Scholarship Finalist last year -- Miss Hendler said she and the bookish Julie, her character on the NBC series, were quite similar.
'We're getting farther apart,' she said. 'Julie's weeks are shorter than mine. I keep getting older.
'Julie's a lot more confused about what she wants to get out of life -- whether she wants to be popular or study,' Miss Hendler said. 'I have that more under control.'
No Hollywood's baby this one. This sounds like a working actress!
'I think I have come to terms with myself,' the teenager continued, making the interviewer squirm a bit.
'Everybody probably goes through a point where everyone seems popular but them,' she said. 'Everyone goes through self-doubt.
'I used to think I was unattractive, with my glasses, but I finally realized I had to deal with who I am. I started smiling just to see if it made a difference and it did.'
When she was 7 months old, Miss Hendler earned $10 for a modeling job in San Francisco. On her first birthday, she posed for a Macy's ad.
When her family moved to Berkeley, she got a reporting assignment on a local TV show, 'Kidswatch News,' working her way up to anchorkid in less than two years.
Then in fourth grade, she landed a part in several episodes of 'The Streets of San Francisco.'
Since then she has worked in episodes of several series, a couple of TV movies and the ABC Afterschool Special 'It Isn't Easy Being a Teenage Millionaire.'
Her first series was ABC's 'A New Kind of Family,' a part that prompted her family's move to Los Angeles.
'It didn't last very long,' she said of the series. 'I thought it was a good show, but it was up against '60 Minutes,'' she said.
Miss Hendler had applied for entrance to Yale this fall, but when she was notified that 'Gimme A Break' would be doing a third season, she withdrew her application.
She said she wanted to go to Yale because she was interested in a good Eastern school with a strong drama department. Instead, she'll be taking courses at UCLA this year.
Eventually, Miss Hendler hopes to do movies and theater.
'I'd like to be in the business a long time,' she said.
Katherine Hepburn is her role model.
'I've always loved her work,' she said. 'She can do everything from drama to the most sophisticated light comedy -- and the fact she has been in the business so long and never felt the need to stop or retire.'
Miss Hendler lives with her mother, a physical therapist, her brother Jonathan, 14, and sister Julia, 15, a talented gymnast.
Neither of her siblings have an interest in show business, she said. 'Jonathan tried commercials when he was young and he got bored.'
