Diff'rent Dana

Unlike the average 24-year-old, Dana Plato did not spend a large portion of her youth watching television. She was too busy living television. For seven years, in the long-running comedy series Diff'rent Strokes, she was the sweetly smiling epitome of the teen-queen schoolgirl--5'2", freckle-faced, with twinkling blue-green eyes and a blonde ponytail. And by then, she was already considered an old-timer in the business. "I started when I was six," she recalls. "It wasn't the result of a master plan or anything. I was studying ballet and was having trouble at a recital. There I was on the stage, crying for my mommy, when an agent in the audience saw me. And that was that."

Her first video appearances were in commercials--more than 250 of them--for fried-chicken and other fast-food chains, gasoline and greeting cards. One of the toughest was a Dole commercial that, because of the constant retakes, required her to eat 82 bananas. "Or maybe it just seemed like eighty-two."

Her age was still single digit when she was offered her first major film role. But she didn't get to play it. "I was cast as the daughter in The Exorcist," she explains. "But my mom wouldn't let me do it. She felt that it wasn't smart to start your career in a role like that. It would limit what you could do afterward. I guess she was right."

Mom did approve of Dana's appearance in a television thriller, Playboy Productions' Beyond the Bermuda Triangle, in which she, Fred MacMurray and Donna Mills dared the dangers of the deep. And, a few years later, she finally got to share celluloid with Satan via a small part in The Exorcist II: The Heretic.

At that point, acting was merely a means to another end--a career as a figure skater. As early as the age of seven, she'd excelled on ice and, with an eye on the Olympics, she trained at the rink from 5:30 A.M. to seven A.M. and from three P.M. to eight P.M. daily.

Her real break came when she and a group of friends were auditioning for The Gong Show, of all things. "We were Pop Warner Football Cheerleaders, and we'd won gold medals left and right. So we did a little dance-cheer thing. We were real good. Too good for The Gong Show, as it turned out. They wouldn't let us on. But a producer was there who asked me to come to his office the next day. I did and he offered me the part of Kimberly on Diff'rent Strokes."

That was the start of seven seasons on the hit comedy series. She portrayed the daughter of a wealthy widower who generously moves the orphaned sons of his late housekeeper from their Harlem hovel into his Park Avenue digs. "The show was about the two boys and the dad," Dana says. "They needed a female element besides the maid, but they didn't bother to develop Kimberly's character. My job was mainly to open a door and tell the boys that the bathroom was free. Viewers must have thought I slept in there."

Eager to dispel the impression that she was unhappy with life in seriesland, Dana adds, "I liked doing the show. I liked knowing I had a job every day. I liked going to the same place, doing the same sort of work."

The only thing she really disliked was her ponytail. "I just wanted to wear my hair some other way," she says. "But they [the producers] wouldn't hear of it. Every day, someone would be there to make sure I had my ponytail with a curl and bangs. Once, I tried something different and they postponed the show until the ponytail returned. Of course, now that I don't have to, I like to wear my hair in a ponytail."

Dana left Strokes just before the end of the seventh season, when she and her alter ego, Kimberly, were both 20. "It was not a pleasant parting," she admits. "I was married and I got pregnant and I wasn't sure how that would go over with the producers. They let me go. Ah, well, so much for show business."

Today, separated from her husband and living with her four-year-old son in Los Angeles, Dana has lost none of her girlish enthusiasm. She bubbles, "What's coming up for me right now is music. I'm putting an album together. I love all kinds of music and I don't want to limit myself. I think I'm best with country-rock, but I'm not ruling out R&B."

Nor is she ignoring her acting career. It's just that she was less than thrilled by her most recent feature, a whodunit titled Prime Suspect. "It hasn't come out yet and, honestly, I hope it never does. Still," she adds, grinning, "I did get to die with a big old knife and lots of blood, and I've never done that before. It's important to do things you've never done before."

Appearing in Playboy is another new experience, but a much happier one. "It makes me feel very special--like getting an award for acting. And, after all," the grin is mischievous now, "isn't posing for Playboy every girl's dream?"

I want to make it clear that I didn't pose for these pictures to change my image," Dana says. "I don't feel any desire to grow up. I'm not ready to be a lawyer. I'm right there for the young-girl parts. I still fit in between sixteen and twenty-four, and that's fine with me." She has good reason to believe in her flexibility. Her character on Diff'rent Strokes grew erratically. "Kimberly stayed twelve years old for three entire seasons, then, all of a sudden, she was fifteen. Amazing what you can do in television." And in magazines, as well, you'll notice.

I've only recently been able to look at myself on television," Dana says. "When I was younger, I'd get all nervous and fidgety. But now I can look at myself and see the wrong moves I made, and the right ones, too." To that, we can only respond, with Bogey: "Here's looking at you, kid." And we may have more chances to do just that in the near future, if Dana's career pans out the way she hopes it will. "I want to do everything," says the irrepressible actress. "I love what Cher has done. A combination of singing and acting. That's it for me."