Forming a career on TV

Smart role choices could bring her lasting fame.
By DAVE MASON
SCRIPPS HOWARD
Rising teen star Kaley Cuoco is home from Toronto, Canada, where she finished a film shoot for her first starring role in a TV movie.
Cuoco, 18, got her big break in ABC's "8 Simple Rules." The show, which started in 2002 as a showcase for John Ritter, who died in September, provided her big break in Hollywood after a lifetime of roles that got her attention but little fame.
Now, the roles she takes as she makes the transition from child star to adulthood could set the tone for the rest of her career, industry professionals say.
In Toronto, she filmed "Crimes of Fashion," a comedy set to air Sunday on the ABC Family Channel. She plays a fashion student whose grandfather is a mobster.
"I read the script; it was perfect for me. I love fashion, and it was good to veer from the character I've been playing (on '8 Simple Rules')," Cuoco said in a phone interview. "I'm choosing projects wisely," she said. "I want to be on '8 Simple Rules' for a couple more years."
In May, she co-starred in "10.5," an NBC disaster movie about a catastrophic earthquake, which critics panned, but to which viewers flocked, generating an audience of almost 20 million.
Early beginnings
Her success didn't come quickly.
Cuoco, who started a modeling and acting career at age 6, acted with Tony Danza as his teenage daughter in a detective pilot that never aired. She played the oldest daughter in 2001 in a low-rated CBS sitcom, "Ladies' Man."
She did receive some recognition for playing Maureen McCormick (who had been cast as Marcia Brady) in the 2000 NBC movie "Growing Up Brady."
Then in July 2003, Vanity Fair magazine mentioned her in a list of promising up-and-comers, along with Hilary Duff, Amanda Bynes, Ashley Olsen, Mary-Kate Olsen and Mandy Moore.
But it was her role as Bridget Hennessy on "8 Simple Rules" that got her the part in "10.5," executive producer Gary Pearl said.
Pearl said he thought Cuoco could bring young viewers to "10.5."
"She's part of that generation. And I think she has a genuine hipness mixed with morals."
Even an over-the-top miniseries such as "10.5" can help an actor if viewers decide they can dismiss reality and just have fun watching it, said Robert Gustafson, director of the Entertainment Industry Institute at California State University, Northridge.
"Imagine 'King Kong' from 1932 and how unbelievable that it is now," Gustafson said.
And, as morbid as it sounds, Ritter's death could continue to benefit Cuoco's career, he said.
That fact will make people remember "8 Simple Rules" when they've forgotten other sitcoms, Gustafson said.
Keeping afloat
Ro Diamond, Cuoco's agent, said Cuoco is able to maintain a layer of sweetness even when she's playing an unpleasant teenager.
"Jennifer Aniston should be her role model," said "8 Simple Rules" creator and executive producer Tracy Gamble. He predicts that Cuoco, like the "Friends" star, will have a successful TV and feature film career.
And when "8 Simple Rules" had to become dramatic as it dealt with the death of Paul Hennessy, Ritter's character, Cuoco showed her acting range, he said.
The key to Cuoco's future could be affected by whether she takes the path of child stars Natalie Wood or Shirley Temple when they became adults, Gustafson said.
Cuoco would benefit from a transitional role showing her maturing into adulthood, such as Wood's character in "Rebel Without A Cause," Gustafson said.
Temple made the mistake of taking such roles as a teenager who has a crush on Cary Grant's character in a silly comedy, "The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer," and the audience didn't warm up to it, Gustafson said.