Sarah Steele finding herself on everybody's to-hire list

EVEN WITH her mom being one of Philadelphia's leading hematologists, Sarah Steele knew that theater, not medicine, was in her blood.

"It happened when I was seven," says the 24-year-old Bala Cynwyd resident and daughter of Dr. Katherine A. High, of the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, and Dr. George Steele, himself a prominent nutritionist in the city who served on the faculty of the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine.

Now living in Brooklyn and bound for local screens today with the premiere of "The To Do List," the daughter of doctors remembers what did it for her early on.

"My parents took me to a production of 'Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.' And that was it."

Any dream will do? Never, she realized: Only theater. She went from "Technicolor" to the Rainbow Company, a production company formed by Philadelphia's Prince Music Theater to present shows for inner-city schoolchildren. "I fell in love," she says of the teen experience, where she did hip-hop and all kinds of musical theater.

Not that she was lonely going back home to the 'burbs; she formed a tight relationship with neighbor Gideon Glick, who also took to acting (Broadway's "Spring Awakening"). Together they would act out plays in the neighborhood - and act on their ambition to one day star together.

They did just that in off-Broadway's "Speech and Debate" (2007) and are doing so again, now in a short film being written by Steele for a cast of three: Glick, herself and her new boyfriend, Raviv Ullman, who starred opposite Steele as her brother in last year's off-Broadway production of "Russian Transport."

Steele's role as a Russian teen in a brooding Sheepshead Bay family influenced by the visit of a cruelly deceptive relative from Russia was transporting indeed, wowing audiences and delivering raves from critics.

And it introduced her to Ullman.

Going from "brother" to boyfriend? It is sort of incestuous, she laughs.

As for the film the three of them are starring in, well, she can't say much other than "it's about our real-life relationships-and a hurricane. And I wrote it in college."

A comparative-lit major at Columbia University, class of 2011, she was intent not to be lured by the siren call of acting while in school. "I wanted to study something other than that in college. Staying in college - finishing college - expanded the way I look at the world. I used to be more limited as a person. Going through college, I feel more well adjusted."

After all, it must have been hard to adjust to sudden fame when it found her as a 15-year-old, after Steele snared a plum role opposite Adam Sandler as his overweight ("body padding") daughter in "Spanglish" (2004).

There were other movies ("Mr. Gibb," "The Good Student") and TV ("Law & Order," "Gossip Girl"), but nothing that could sway her from that commitment to college.

And in a way, she landed her job in this summer's "The To Do List" as a graduation gift.

"I was offered the audition while on a trip with my parents to celebrate my graduation from Columbia," Steele says.

That wasn't the only gift she received. In her final year at Columbia, Steele landed the role of Marissa Gold, daughter of Eli, the weasel-like worry-wart of a lawyer in the hit CBS-TV drama "The Good Wife."

Was the actress' real-life father, the doctor, surprised to be replaced suddenly by Eli Gold, the lawyer? The actress chuckles, professing her admiration for Alan Cumming, who plays Eli. It helped, she says, that her parents love that show, also starring Julianna Margulies and Josh Charles as lovers/lawyers Alicia and Will. "Both my parents said they never got so many emails from friends and colleagues - with all the theater work that I've done - than when I was on 'The Good Wife.' "

It was good for her, too, in visibility. Does that mean she's hoping to return to the role soon? (She was on for three episodes during the 2011 season). She laughs at the prospect that viewers are wondering why Marissa suddenly disappeared.

You know, said Steele, "I think viewers are more concerned with what will happen between Alicia and Will than with what happened to Marissa Gold!"