When I was asked to do an interview for this magazine, I immediately became a little nervous. Magazines geared towards teenage girls generally turn an interview into an opportunity to chat about boys, makeup and fashion. While it would normally seem like fun to have a girly conversation, I wanted to do a more serious piece. I am currently rehearsing a play called The Diary of Anne Frank. Clearly, the subject of the play is a bit too important to handle lightly, so I expressed my qualms to the editors of Seventeen. Unexpectedly, they turned the article over to me to write as I pleased. I was thrilled, of course, to have control over the article, but now, as I write this (the day after the PSATs and the night before this is due), it seems more daunting than it had originally sounded. Well, I'll try my best to interest you.

My schedule

We rehearse six days a week, seven hours a day (six hours if we're doing well). School days, I wake up at 7:15, leave for school at 8:00, go to English class, physics and gym. Then, at 10:30, a car picks me up at school and drives me to Manhattan (a one-hour drive). Rehearsal begins at 11:30. We break for lunch from 2:00 to 3:00, and during that time I am tutored in one of the classes that I have missed at school: history, French, math or Japanese. Rehearsal ends by 7:30 PM, and I get tutored again from 7:30 to 8:30. On weekends, I get tutored before and after work both Saturday and Sunday. A car drives me home each day, and I go to sleep. After a month of rehearsal, I will leave for Boston where we will open the show, fix it if necessary, and basically prepare for New York City. We will open in December in New York and perform eight shows a week. We will have Mondays off and do two shows on Wednesdays and Saturdays. While I'm on Broadway, I will go to school full-time. I will finish playing Anne Frank toward the end of the school year.

If my schedule sounds hectic, it is. I'm always pressed to finish homework, study for tests, learn lines. But I'm really excited to bring this show to people, and my parents and friends keep me sane. I go out with my friends at least one night a week, and that maintains my energy because I feel then that I have balanced work, school and play. I have the greatest friends in the world...They're fun, nice, and they have never acted weird about my being an actress.

Anne Frank's story

When I was twelve, I was in Paris filming The Professional. I was living with my mother; my father was working, so he only visited every other weekend. One weekend we went to Anne Frank's house in Amsterdam. I bought a copy of her diary there and began to read it at my father's urging. I became so entwined in in her writing that I did nothing else for the next week until I finished it. I wouldn't hear what people were saying. I got yelled at all the time.

For those of you who don't know, Anne Frank was a 13-year-old Jewish girl who was living in Holland when Hitler sent a notice for her older sister, Margot, to go work in a labor camp. Their family had already experienced a lot of anti -Semitism, and this was the final straw that made them go into hiding. They lived in a secret part of of her father's warehouse for two years. While there, Anne kept a diary, documenting not only the progression of the war, but also her feelings about life, love and maturation.

This is the most honest book I've ever read because it is a true diary. It made me feel as if someone understood me. Anne Frank wrote about things that every teenager goes through but doesn't really discuss openly. At the end, the family and the other people they hid with were caught and sent to concentration camps. This horrific ending brings even more meaning to her diary. Her faith in humanity, even when she was starving and sick in the attic--all because she was Jewish--had a huge influence on me. She believed in good and she believed that people were good at heart, even when everything pointed in the other direction.

The play

I decided to do this play because I am truly convinced that people need to be constantly reminded of compassion. We have starving people, war-torn countries and children who will not have the chance to change the world as they should. This sounds cliched and idealistic, I know, but it really is what the world is like, and people must remember that.

I also have a personal attchment to the play because my great-grandparents, my great-uncle and several other family members were murdered by the Nazis during World War II. I think that the world must acknowledge and understand how useless hatred and racism are, and fight against these problems. Every time I hear a racist, an anti-Semitic or any other hateful slur, I am reminded that people have not yet learned.

We will soon perform the play and spread the message to our audiences--we hope. It is the least I can do in tribute to to Anne Frank, who has helped me become a better human being. Every day, when I go to rehearsal, petty problems that seem like traumas are put back into perspective and become trivial. I can imagine a time when our generation is made up of parents and educators who are compassionate and caring. If we begin now to strive towards that goal, we may begin to reach it.