Heather Matarazzo would hardly fit the definition of Hollywood teen beauty like the ones that pop up on Dawson's Creek.

Yet she doesn't care.

Tracing the 16-year-old Oyster Bay High School senior's TV and movie career, it's clear she's managed to find challenging and interesting roles without catering to Hollywood's basest tastes.

And now Ms. Matarazzo, who broke through in the acclaimed arthouse flick Welcome to the Dollhouse in 1995, has grabbed a supporting role in CBS' unusual hit television show Now and Again.

Earlier this year, Ms. Matarazzo received the pilot script for Now and Again from Glenn Gordon Caron, producer of the 1980s Bruce Willis/Cybill Shepherd show Moonlighting. "I thought it was an amazing script," she said in a quick phone interview from her home in Oyster Bay. She met with Mr. Caron and signed on as the daughter of the main character.

Ms. Matarazzo is now splitting time between the local high school and tutors on the set of Now and Again, which shoots in New York City.

The show, an hour-long program on CBS Friday nights at 9 p.m., garnered surprisingly strong ratings in its debut on Sept. 24, beating the competition for adults ages 18 to 49 and attracting more than 12 million viewers. The show has seen modest slippage in viewership since, with 11.5 million viewers for the second week and 11.2 million the third week.

Critics, based on the pilot, have been fairly euphoric about the unusual show. Caryn James of The New York Times wrote, "The quirky Now and Again is one of the season's most appealing shows, largely because it grafts its Frankenstein plot onto a romance." Howard Rosenberg of the Los Angeles Times called it "an endearing new CBS hour...that promises to be one of TV's shouldn't-miss series."

The plotline for the show sounds like it's straight out of Six Million Dollar Man but the show is more "an action/comedy/drama/romance," which makes it hard to pigeonhole, Ms. Matarazzo says. Michael Wiseman, a middle-aged insurance agent played originally by John Goodman, dies in a train accident and awakens to find himself in a studly young body, played by Eric Close. The government had implanted his brain in a "superhuman" body. Mr. Wiseman is told he will fight for justice but cannot contact his family.

To support the new show, Ms. Matarazzo flew to Los Angeles on a publicity blitz the week of the show's debut. Among her appearances, she bestowed a delighted Rosie O'Donnell with an Entenmann's Ultimate Crumb Cake Sept. 23, gabbed on NBC's Late Late Show with Craig Kilborn the same day and debated gender issues on ABC's Politically Incorrect the next night.

Ms. Matarazzo has had opportunities to move out to Los Angeles, but she and her parents agreed years ago that she lead as normal teen life as possible away from Tinseltown. And no doubt -- Oyster Bay is about as far away from that as any town.

She says though her TV schedule is often grueling, she's actually spending more time in Oyster Bay than in the past when she was doing mostly movies that took her away for weeks at a time. At least now she can sleep in her own bed every night.

Ms. Matarazzo finds comfort in the town's intimate setting where everyone knows her yet don't make a big deal about her fame. "People treat me the same even though some people may associate me as the actress," she says.

As a B/B-plus student, she says she has no deep strength in any one academic subject. But her college plans are pretty concrete already: "I want to go for directing and producing. I want to stay in New York City." She is applying to schools such as Columbia University and NYU's School of Visual Arts.

She's inspired by Jodie Foster, a child actor and Yale University graduate who blossomed into a classy Academy Award winning adult actress with directing and producing credentials to boot. She also admires Sean Penn for his intensity and "not being afraid of boundaries and censorship. For him, it's not about the money but the art." And for Ms. Matarazzo, that's key.

As for the TV show, she's optimistic about its chances of survival.

"The scripts keep getting better and better," she says. "That's highly unusual. They keep you on the edge of your seat. Also, they're hilarious. They're extremely sarcastic and funny. I love the dry sense of humors of the characters."

She identifies with her TV character, who coincidentally is also named Heather. "She's sarcastic, sassy, strong-willed and independent, like me," she says.

Looking back on Welcome to the Dollhouse, her breakthrough hit playing an insecure middle-school student, she said in an interview earlier this year with Newsweek that she wasn't fully aware how controversial the film would be in its unmitigated realism.

"I don't think you can compare any film to Dollhouse and there's not going to be another film like it," she said. "It was hard, you know, because kids can be vicious and they can be cruel... That goes without saying for any teenager,... but especially if you're an actress and you make a film such as that where you get ridiculed on screen. Kids feed off of that to ridicule you off screen. People would call me 'Wienerdog.' I wouldn't fight it, I'd just ignore it because I hate provoking arguments."

Ms. Matarazzo doesn't get much airtime on Now and Again's debut -- about 60 seconds -- but she gets beefier plot lines down the road.

After several years acting, she has developed a mature -- and understandably cynical-- view of Hollywood. "I feel as though the entertainment industry is a lake," she says. "Actors in some weird way are the meat and the scripts and paychecks are piranhas. You have to be careful what you do and why you do it."

Rodney Ho, 30, is a reporter for The Wall Street Journal, covering entrepreneurship out of the Atlanta bureau. He graduated from Oyster Bay High School in 1987 and freelanced for the Oyster Bay Enterprise-Pilot from 1987 to 1990. He met a 6-year-old Heather in 1990 while covering the OBHS high school graduation for Heather's friend, Cathy McCracken '90, whose married name is Cathy Farraday.

1999 Getting to Know You

1998 Hurricane Streets

1998 54, nominated for the YoungStar Best Performance by a Young Actress in a Drama Film

1997 Devil's Advocate

1996 Welcome to the Dollhouse, won Independent Spirit Award for best debut performance as Dawn Weiner

1999 Now and Again, CBS, playing Heather Wiseman

1999 Our Guys: Outrage at Glen Ridge, TV movie playing the mentally retarded girl

1998 Law and Order, 4/24/99 NBC TV series

1997 Roseanne, ABC TV series

1997 ER, NBC TV series

1996 Music video for Sheryl Crow: "A Change Would Do You Good"

1993 Adventures of Pete & Pete, TV series on Nickelodeon

Sources: Internet Movie Database

Favorite places in Oyster Bay to visit: Dunkin' Donuts and the Attic Door

Favorite teacher: Karen Crowley, who taught her photography: "She didn't censor you or put you down for what you handed in," and she was great with constructive criticism.

Homage to the late Denise Heagney, a longtime English teacher at the high school who died last month: Mrs. Heagney seemed stern on the surface when in fact she just cared about teaching and wanted the students to care about what they were learning. "She forced people to do their best. She was teaching us we were in high school, that our next step was college."

Latest CD purchased: Tori Amos' To Venus & Back. Her favorite musical artists range from Nirvana to Lisa Loeb to Ella Fitzgerald.

Favorite TV shows (besides Now and Again): Ally McBeal, Party of Five

Her thoughts on seventh and eighth graders joining the high school kids: "I feel it's inappropriate that seventh and eighth graders should be surrounded by seniors. They never should have closed Birmingham" elementary school.

Heather managed a few words in edgewise on Sept. 24 1999 on Bill Maher's Politically Incorrect on ABC. Here's an excerpt:

Bill Maher, talking about women: But they are competitive. They're competitive about men. They're not competitive - men are competitive about all sorts of bull. They'll bet on anything. They'll care about a fight or - women don't - but when it comes to men, they're extremely competitive.

Janeane Garafalo: That's not true

Heather: That's not true at all. I mean, you're just - you're just generalizing the whole female population, whereas, like, my group of friends, myself included, I mean, I could care less. I could care less about guys in general. You know what I mean?

[Laughter]

I care about -

Bill: That's different -

Craig Ferguson: That's a whole different subject.

[Laughter]

Heather: I mean, I care about the individual, you know?

Bill: Well, that's very enlightening.

Heather: I think that if women are catty about men, I think it stems from insecurity. And this personification that society has made up that women have to be accepted by men.

Source: Politically Incorrect, ABC