Melissa Brennan came to comedy on a danse walk
By Alena Prime, Télé Star, 1986	Home   Cette page en Français

The story of Melissa Brennan, the young heroin of Santa Barbara, could be used as a basis for a scenario of soap. The one who everyone in Hollywood tenderly calls "Missie" is only nineteen and, until now, she really had a lot of chance. Still better : her success did not break her freshness and the innocence that make a good share of her charm. Melissa is born on March 14, 1967 in Eaton Town, a tiny village of the State of New Jersey, located at one hour and a half of bus from New York. Wise little girl with fair tresses, she had a model childhood, assiduously attending the catholic school of her parish. Her father worked as a musical programmer in the local radio station. As soon as his young girl is four years old, he registered her in the only dance lessons of the area. Melissa became impassioned for this activity. When she reached the age of eleven, she begged her parents to let her take lessons of classic ballet in New York. Permission accorded. Almost incredible thing, every day, after school, the little girl took the bus all alone for the big city. The girl remembers today with tenderness this time of her life. "The confidence of my parents gave me my chance very early, she says. And our happiness prevented me from making silly things."

What led Melissa in the capital of cinema, are her dance lessons. One evening she was repeating, a talents hunter came, noticed and asked her if she wanted to do advertising for television. The girl was then fifteen years old and her parents gave their agreement. Melissa shot a spot for Kodak, which has been aired on television during all December 1982.

In March 1984, her agent asked her to be present to a significant audition, for a TV show in preparation. "That day, I had a heavy cold, she remembers. I really did not want to make three hours of bus to go to wait my turn during three or four hours in the middle of two hundred candidates. My agent finished by convincing me. I went there, I read a scene, I found myself bad to cry. While coming back home, in the bus, I thought that I was not ready for this kind of things and that I should never have gone there. I did not have a news of my audition for four months. But, at the beginning of July 1984, one fine morning, I received a phone call from my agent : "You leave tomorrow for California, he announced me. They want you for Santa Barbara. I stayed in Hollywood twenty-four hours, then they gave me three days to go to take my stuffs and to come back to begin the shooting."

Melissa's mother, who is a secretary, asked for a two months break to install her daughter in Hollywood. "The day she left me, said the young actress, I sat down on my bed and I cried. I felt myself completely lost. I cried during all the night before falling asleep, exhausted. But, the next morning, I saw the sun shining. It was a splendid day. I felt that it was the beginning of a new life. Now, I adore California."

In addition to her success, Melissa Brennan has indeed good reasons to be happy : while shooting a cinema movie, The Butterfly Revolution, she met a young and beautiful actor, Tom Fridley. They fell passionately in love the one with the other and do not leave the other any more. Moreover, the young actress has been hired for a new role in the show Days of our Lives. At nineteen, her life has definitely what to inspire the scenario of a romantic show.