An entire generation knew her as Sabrina., but Melissa Joan Hart was also Clarissa and the occasional iconic character until her flame seemed to die out beyond a few cameos here or there. Many of us wonder what happened to Melissa Joan Hart at 46, but we didn’t expect to find this particular answer. Welcome to a life that will surprise you.
destined for success
“I know she won’t run out of Melissa” is a part of the Allman Brothers song that gave our protagonist her name. Melissa Joan Hart was born on April 18, 1976 in Smithtown.a town in Suffolk County, New York, where his mother, Paula Hart, a then talent director, and his father, a carpenter, purveyor and oyster farmer, they decided very early on that he had talent.
so much that at the age of four he already appeared on his first filming set to advertise a bath-time doll named Splashy, a baby that floats and splashes at you if you press on its knees. At nine she appeared in episodes of television series such as ‘The equalizer’ (later covered by Denzel Washington in the cinema) and at thirteen he shared a Broadway stage with Martin Sheen, William Hurt or Calista Flockhart. Come on, success did not stop knocking on her door.
In 1991, at the age of 15, Melissa Joan Hart landed the lead role in ‘The Clarissa Stories’ (‘Clarissa explains it all’), a Nickelodeon series that TVE used here as an attempt to keep the audience that left with ‘Blossom’. Although she felt embarrassed by the role, she recorded two albums based on the series and filmed a pilot for a spin-off where she told her adventures in college. But what awaited him was much more magical.
a bit witchy
Sabrina, the teenage witch, was born in 1962 in the Archie comics, and got her own series in 1971. In fact, a year earlier she had already starred in her own 31-episode animated series. Nevertheless, this time Sabrina Spellman was going to return in stylewith a movie (which made Melissa Joan Hart drop out of college, by the way) that served to tie her in with a role that would not leave until seven seasons later and turned it into a true international phenomenon: ‘Sabrina, things of witches’.
The pilot, which was totally different from the movie, it was viewed by more than 17 million people in the United States. By comparison, the last season was watched by only three million. In between, several changes of showrunner, of actors (with the departure of Sabrina’s aunts right at the end), two movies, an animated series (with more private merchandising), six video games, a lot of books and comics and a chain variation (from ABC to The WB) that ended up condemning it to low budget.
At the end, Melissa Joan Hart (who sold a reality show about her wedding) was known throughout the world, but typecast as Sabrina. She repeated the role in ‘Me and the world’, ‘Teen angel’ or the series ‘Out of the loop’ and in some seasons he decided to direct some episodes. He would not do it again until a decade later, but he was already bitten by the bug. It took her a while to get them to stop seeing her as the teenage witch, but in the process, in addition to dancing on ‘Dancing with the stars’ (she was ninth), ended up starring in the Christmas movie ‘Holiday in handcuffs’ along with another broken toy of the industry: Mario López. It was the beginning of his future.
Happy New Year and happiness
From 2010, the actress starred in the series ‘Melissa & Joey’ on ABC Family, a rather mushy thing that didn’t leave much of an impression on the little over a million viewers who watched it over five seasons. In between, Joan Hart wrote her memoir (‘Melissa Tells It All: Stories From My Abnormally Normal Life’), totally failed trying to finance a movie, ‘Darci’s walk of shame’on Kickstarter (raised just 2.6%) and opened a candy store in California that was later sued for racial discrimination.
In addition to these minor disasters that damaged her public image, the actress earned a reputation for being a Republican (albeit pro-gun control) and very religious (she’s a Presbyterian). In fact, he starred in the very ridiculous ‘God’s not dead 2’, the second part of the infamous trilogy. And in between, he got what he wanted most: directing again, in this case also starring opposite Jaleel White in a Christmas movie, ‘Santa’s Promise’, which received surprisingly positive reviews to be a tape of this genre so… let’s say, particular.
And the rest is history: in 2022, while preparing the reboot of ‘Clarissa’, Melissa Joan Hart has become a professional Christmas movie director like ‘Feliz NaviDAD’ (again with Mario López) or this year’s ‘Santa Bootcamp’, about a training camp for Santa Claus in a shopping center starring Rita Moreno. It is not that her acting career has been left out of Christmas: also It appears in ‘Dear Christmas’, ‘Mistletoe in Montana’, ‘Christmas reservations’, ‘Broadcasting Christmas’, ‘The shop of illusions’ or ‘A very nutty Christmas’. We can say that the teenage witch has become the Christmas adult.