Bateman Instincts : Actress Trusts Herself Much More Now than as a Sitcom Star

There was a time, Justine Bateman admits, when she was more comfortable playing the part of Mallory Keaton than she was with being herself.

“When I became Mallory, I never doubted myself,” Bateman says, remembering the sweet but intellectually limited “Family Ties” character that made her a television star before she was old enough to vote. “It was such a nurturing environment on that show. It was a place where you could do no wrong, where you always felt safe.”

But in real life? “I wasn’t nearly so sure of myself. I didn’t trust my instincts,” she says. “When people would say to me, ‘Just be yourself,’ I didn’t know what that meant. And it’s only been recently that that’s changed for me, that I don’t have to worry about being what someone else wants me to be. I figured out that I’m OK.”

She is sitting in a booth at a Melrose Avenue restaurant, wearing a fading dark blue denim shirt, black jeans, black boots and, on her right hand, four silver rings. She chose this place not because she’s been here before but because she likes the sound of its name--Indigo. Between sips of coffee she inhales the fragrance of a rosemary bread loaf.

She is here, ostensibly, to talk about her new TV movie, “In the Eyes of a Stranger,” airing Tuesday on CBS, but the conversation inevitably drifts to her years on “Family Ties” and the struggles of leaving Mallory Keaton behind.

Bateman was just 16 when “Family Ties” went on the air in 1982 and, except for a couple of commercials, it was her first acting job. At the time, she says, acting was something she attempted with a “sort of what-the-hey attitude,” not because she had any professional aspirations but because her younger brother, Jason, who’d gotten a part on “Little House on the Prairie” seemed to be having a pretty good time.

In the years that followed, the ratings for “Family Ties” soared and Justine’s visibility rose with them. There were plenty of stories that painted her as something of a Hollywood brat, spoiled by success, cruising the late-night rock ‘n’ roll clubs in her Porsche. Some of those stories certainly were true, but much of her attitude, she acknowledges now, was a facade, an attempt to keep the world from thinking of her simply as that nice, sweet, simple, Mallory.

“I didn’t want anyone to think I was nice, because then I thought I wouldn’t have any power. I wouldn’t have any control over what they thought of me,” she says, laughing at the thought of it. “I tried to act so serious sometimes.

“I wouldn’t go through my early 20s again for anything,” says Bateman, who is now all of 26. “I know that I appeared, or tried to appear, most of the time very together, very independent, very ‘I don’t need anyone.’ But that was all in fear of admitting that I needed friends. I was afraid that people would be disappointed in me if they found out I needed them. I was afraid to ask, ‘Can I put my head in your lap because I don’t feel so good today?’ ”

By the time “Family Ties” ended its seven-year run in 1989, Bateman had long since decided that acting, serious acting, was her life’s work. The question was how to convince the rest of the world that she could be something more than a sitcom star.

“I knew it would take awhile,” she says. “And I’ve been gradually chipping away at it rather than going for some big explosion. I suppose I could have done something to make a big splash, do a Playboy nude spread or something that would change people’s perception of me. But my intent has never been to blow the whole ‘Family Ties’ image away. I’m proud of that show and the character I created. I don’t want to do away with any of that. I just want to add to it.”

So, for the last four years, Bateman’s career path has been a steady climb--movies of the week, low-budget features and, perhaps most significantly, theater. She has appeared at the prestigious Williamstown Theater, worked off-Broadway and at the Berkeley Repertory Theatre, the first place she performed after “Family Ties” shut down.

“I’m tremendously grateful for people like Sharon Ott at the Berkeley Rep, people who saw my auditions and said, ‘This is the right person for the role.’ I’m sure there were others who told them, ‘Why are you casting her? You’re going to bring down the credibility of the piece.’ But they believed in their first instinct and the joy, for me, is going in and proving that first instinct was right.”

So now, she says, she picks her parts carefully, looking for roles that give her something different to do. It is why she took “In the Eyes of a Stranger.” When she began reading the script, she thought it would be another scream-and-run TV movie about a woman who is a victim, a secretary who accidentally witnesses a murder and falls in love with the policeman (Richard Dean Anderson) assigned to protect her. After reading the first 20 pages, she called her agent and told him she wasn’t interested in anything as ordinary as that.

But when he insisted she keep reading, she found out that her character, the secretary named Lynn Carlson, is not as simple as she appears and turns out not to be a victim at all. “Strangers,” it turns out, is about people who aren’t quite what they seem.

Asked if that description could be applied to her, Justine Bateman says no. Lynn Carlson, after all, is just a character. Bateman, these days, would rather be herself.

“In the Eyes of a Stranger” airs Tuesday at 9 p.m. on CBS.