By the time Shawn Batten read for the role of Sara Cummings on Sunset Beach, auditioning for Aaron Spelling had become familiar territory. Thank goodness. "Mr. Spelling is very hands-on," she says. "Auditions are in his office, and he's there. And E. Duke Vincent, too - its 15 people on a very long couch against the wall. You walk in and you're just, like, standing there." The nimble-witted Batten imitates a meek starlet coming unglued: "It's, like, 'Hi...' then somebody starts reading with you, they thank you, and you leave. Bing, bang, boom. But the more I went up to the office the easier it got, because I knew what to expect. And what's going on here. Hope I'll get this one. (Batten also auditioned for Beverly Hills, 90210.)"

Blessed with the ideal psychology for an actor - resilient, frank, logical and trusting of her intuition and instincts - Batten "always knew I wanted to be an actress," she says. "But it wasn't an aggressive pursuit in middle school or high school, to the point where it was my every thought." Participation in school plays left her sufficient time to work on her grades, fall in love with cutting-edge rock music, and make pals in a variety of social circles. Besides, "It took a couple of years of me saying, 'I really want to do this,' to convince my parents because I don't think they really wanted to invest the time unless I was dead serious."

Finally, her mom got things started with a few tips from a neighborhood parent whose child worked in commercials. "She figured that as long as I was going to do it, it would be done right and intelligently, and I had to keep taking it seriously." On top of the dance lessons she long had been taking, Batten began traveling to Manhattan from her home in Ramsey, N.J., every Saturday for the youth program at the acting school founded by stage legend Lee Strasberg. "I started getting cast in commercials in junior year."

As for the parts that Batten didn't get, "It came down to what my mom said, and still does say: If it hasn't happened, it wasn't meant to be. The best thing for you is the thing that is going to happen. So I'll dwell on a disappointment for a second, then call my agent, get my next script, read it and concentrate on that. And just keep going."

Mom's words to live by, plus Batten's discipline, won her acceptance to several top-rated college drama programs. Following her keen intuition, Batten chose Syracuse University in upstate New York: "It just felt like a place I could live, learn and grow." It was. And every spring break found her in Manhattan, "to meet with agents or get new head shots, things like that." Summers were crammed with auditions. Senior year, Batten notified her agents of the exact date of graduation: "I asked them to start submitting my pictures and resumes" as a full-time client. Three months later, Batten drove her belongings the 35 miles from Ramsey - where her parents David and Olga, and younger sister, Sharon, still live - to Manhattan, ready to join the jammed ranks of aspiring actresses. She juggled stage plays, commercials, independent films and pay-the-rent gigs for two or three years. For the ex-hockey player's daughter (Dad once played for a Detroit Red Wings farm team), working at a sports bar during the New York Rangers' Stanley Cup-winning season was more than just rent money, however. "At least I've seen them win the Stanley Cup once in my lifetime," she says with a laugh. "I love hockey and the Rangers."

In 1996, Batten's intuition surprised her yet again. "I have a complete willingness to just sort of go with it, otherwise I can't exactly figure out what gave me the courage - or the stupidity - that's led me to where I am now. I never thought I would live in Los Angeles, but one day I just said it to my parents: I'm going to L.A. at the end of the month. For no reason. I had to try living their full time." She stuck it out, even when more jobs were coming from the East. After relocating, Batten co-starred in an MTV sitcom, Apt. 2F, for the final half of it's season.

Auditioning for daytime dramas became part of her routine; it was another "if it's meant to be" genre, along with all the others. She'd heard discouraging words, like any beginner. Hers came while she was working on the film Quiz Show, and came from an experienced co-worker, who warned her that soaps create bad actors. "This was right after college, and I remember thinking: Hey, I want a job!" Batten says with a laugh. "And I was thinking, too, that if you're a good actor, you can act in anything. Daytime is one more place to learn."

Since her first Sunset tape date in April 1998, Batten has been learning, all right, at the required brain-twisting velocity. "I like how fast we work. I love this medium. I find it very, very challenging - all the time. It's not like reading a film script and understanding the emotional through-line of your character, her transitions, where you're going to go from the beginning to the end.

"With soaps, any day, I could find out that I had a three-year period of amnesia, which no one told me about. And you'd read the script thinking, 'You're kidding! I've never indicated in any way that that has happened to me, not through anything I've played so far!" Batten says with a laugh, then continues; the more fun she's having the faster she talks. "In certain ways, that kind of story surprise has happened to me as Sara. So then you have to try to take this new information into the character you've already created. Not letting it come off like you've just had some personality split overnight is really, really hard.

"We have so many campy scenes, like Sara's 'insecurity fantasies,'" Batten continues. "Some times the directors will ask us to take it seriously; stuff like the setting and the music will make it funny. Other times we are allowed to just be completely over-the-top and have fun with it. Certain scenes wouldn't make sense if you acted them realistically." Batten's favorite fantasy to date, by the way, is the one that showed Sara, Maria and Meg as neo-Charlie's Angels.

While Sara's relationship with current beau Casey remains in question, Batten has been happily dating producer/instrumentalist Steve Lukather for the last year. The well-respected guitar ace, who recently toured Japan with jazz star Larry Carlton, has completed a reunion CD with his band, Toto. Batten gives it a thumbs-up: "There's more of a rock sound, a little more of an edge to it" than songs like Rosanna, released during the band's heyday in the early '80s.

As she does toward the loopiness of an actor's life, Batten takes a relaxed, realistic stance toward the equally wild life of a musician's girlfriend.

"Everyone keeps asking me, 'Doesn't that make you sad?' that Steve's getting ready to do all this touring and travelling. And I'm like, 'Well, I'll miss him, but I knew what he did for a living before we got together, and he knows what I have to do. I can sit around being sad about it, but he still has to go on the road.'" She adds the postscript in a low giggle: "There will be a couple of phone conversations of 'Oh, come back! Come home!'"

The romance is rolling along quite well, thank you, without any diamonds or wedding talk. "I've never said, 'I'm going to get married and have kids,' and all that. I've never even planned on marriage. It's not like I wouldn't ever want to. But as long as I'm happy, and I'm in love, things generally are good. I don't need to do the marriage and kids thing. It's not part of completing life to me. I guess some people are taught that there is a certain sequence to life; finish school, get married, become financially secure, have children, grow old and spend winters in Florida."

Batten doesn't look down on those traditions: "It's just that I don't really see things that way, that's all. If I got married, for instance, at age 50, and adopted a child, well, then that would be my life."

Today, her life includes picking up one Sunset co-star at the dentist, then going to dinner with another co-star, who's celebrating his birthday, and his fiancée, plus some other people from the show. And oh, yeah, there's still the laundry, and getting packed for a flight home tomorrow and ? whew!

"Right now, I love my job, I love my boyfriend, and I can't wait to go home and see my family this weekend," she says. "That's as far as I'm planning my life right now."

Not bad, except maybe for that darn laundry.