They Found the Right Person for a Difficult Role

Thirteen-year-old Lacey Conlan is trying to strike a serious pose for the photographer, but a smile keeps creeping across her face until she can’t stop laughing. “I can’t do serious!” she proclaims.

Conlan has one of those thousand-kilowatt smiles that go on forever. And even while she was enduring months of radiation and chemotherapy last year at the City of Hope Cancer Center in Duarte for a rare brain tumor, she never lost her ability to smile.

It was her smile and sunny personality that won the hearts of the doctors and staff at City of Hope, as well as the cast and crew of the CBS series “That’s Life.” Tonight, Conlan makes the second of two scheduled appearances on the hourlong drama as Sally, a young girl suffering from brain cancer that thirtysomething college student Lydia (Heather Paige Kent) meets and befriends at a day-care center.

“She has such a life force,” says her doctor, Michael Jensen, director of the pediatric neuro-oncology program at City of Hope. “It shows in her eyes and expression.”

Conlan was first diagnosed in November 1999 with a primitive neuroectodermal tumor--a rare, highly malignant brain cancer. Her first doctors told the family the chances of her reaching her 18th birthday were around 30%.

“She has a type of brain cancer that we see in the pediatric age range,” Jensen explains. “In a sense, for these types of cancer [in the cortex of the brain], it’s more challenging to make that cure possible without doing a lot of damage. The cortex part of the brain is where the vital functions and consciousness lives.”

Her survival chances are now almost triple what they were initially.

Conlan’s stint on “That’s Life” came about when the casting directors of “That’s Life” called the City of Hope’s publicist looking for a youngster to play the role of Sally. The publicist recommended Conlan.

“My mom pretty much knew I wanted to be on it,” Conlan said during a recent interview at City of Hope. Conlan, who wears a scarf while waiting for her hair to grow back, was relaxing with her mother, Kathy, in the teen room at the cancer center.

“I had about six or seven lines on the first one, and then on the second episode, I only had three, but it was still fun,” says Conlan, who lives with her parents in Anaheim Hills. The baby in the family, Conlan has a 28-year-old sister and 26-year-old brother.

“That’s Life” isn’t Conlan’s first experience in front of the camera. Last fall, the casting directors for the Kevin Costner film “Dragonfly” were looking for a young chemotherapy patient to be an extra.

“I was supposed to be getting chemo during that time, but my counts weren’t what they were supposed to be so they ended up just canceling the chemo,” Conlan says matter-of-factly.

Conlan wasn’t a bit nervous about “Dragonfly.” “It just really seemed like a play I was doing for a class project.”

Nor was she star-struck appearing in a scene with Costner. “He was a couple of steps away from me,” Conlan says. “At the end of each take, he would go back to get something to drink and he would walk by and sometimes he would say ‘Hi’ and sometimes he would goof with me and give me a hug.”

“And he tried to kiss you,” adds her mom.

Conlan shakes her head. “No, but he tried to goof with me.”

“She liked me better than Kevin Costner, which made me very happy,” says “That’s Life’s” Kent, laughing. “She is such a great kid and she’s beautiful. She has got that inner light in her that just radiates out. You cannot meet this girl and not love her.”

“That’s Life” executive producer Anita Addison says they wanted to cast someone who had cancer or another life-threatening illness in the role for humanitarian reasons: “Wouldn’t it be great if a kid who always wanted to [act] had a shot at doing this?” she says.

Conlan exceeded everyone’s expectations on the series. “I wasn’t on the set all the time,” says Addison, “but she is very talented and very considerate. She is just a sweet, good kid.”

Since she was old enough to understand television, Conlan has wanted to act. “I always used to watch ‘Sesame Street’ and I just wanted to be an actress,” she explains. “Every class play, I was usually part of the play.”

Acting professionally was a little different from what she expected. “‘I thought it would be if you said the line once and messed up, it didn’t matter,” she says. “Now I found out, you do it at least six times.”

As she gets stronger and healthier, Conlan is planning to continue acting. “We just have an appointment with [the Screen Actors Guild] and then as soon as I get into SAG, I will probably next starting looking for an agent.”

Her mother interrupts her: “We’re looking now, Lacey.”

“OK,” says Conlan. “We’re looking now.”

She would love to work with Jim Carrey because he makes her laugh.

“You also said Ben Affleck,” says Kathy Conlan.

“Yeah, maybe Ben Affleck,” her daughter says with a big smile. “But mostly Jim Carrey.”

Conlan also gives speeches about her cancer to schools and other groups whenever she can. “I want to talk about my story because then it lets other children and parents know that this can happen to you.”

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* “That’s Life” airs tonight at 8 on CBS. The episode has been rated TV-PG-LS (may be unsuitable for young children, with special advisories for coarse language and sex).