

Initially, after first being recognized in public, Hart felt embarrassed to be acting in a children's show while being a teenager.
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Her role in the series also led to her starring in the FMV video game Nickelodeon's Director's Lab as a tour guide who takes the player around a movie studio. The show brought her four consecutive Young Artist Award nominations, winning three. In 1991 Hart landed the starring role on the Nickelodeon series Clarissa Explains It All, a comedy about a teenaged girl in everyday situations, which was successful during its four-year run. Hart on the set of Clarissa Explains It All at Nickelodeon Studios in 1991 That same year, she appeared in an off-Broadway production of Beside Herself with William Hurt and Calista Flockhart. In 1989, she became an understudy in a Broadway production of The Crucible starring Martin Sheen.

She also auditioned for the lead role Jamie Lloyd in Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers, losing the role to Danielle Harris. She appeared on the Apepisode of the NBC daytime soap opera Another World.
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Other early television work included a small role in the miniseries Kane & Abel in 1985, a guest-starring role in an episode of The Equalizer in 1986, and a starring role alongside Katherine Helmond in the Emmy Award-winning TV movie Christmas Snow, also in 1986. From then on, she appeared regularly in commercials, making 25 of them before the age of five.

Hart's career began at age four when she made a television commercial for a bathtub doll called Splashy. She chose Catherine as her confirmation name when she was in the eighth grade, but does not use it professionally. Hart was named after the Allman Brothers song " Melissa", while her middle name, Joan, came from her maternal grandmother. Hart has three half-sisters: Alexandra, Samantha, and Mackenzie. In 1994, her mother married television executive Leslie Gilliams, who is best known for his appearance on Season 5 of MasterChef in 2014, when he finished in 3rd place. Her parents divorced in the early 1990s, and she moved with her mother and siblings to New York City. Hart's parents had four other children after Melissa: Trisha, Elizabeth, Brian, and Emily, who are all in acting. Her maternal grandfather, Stanley John Voje, was a Navy veteran and Catholic. Hart was born in Smithtown, New York, the first child of Paula Hart (née Voje), a producer and talent manager, and William Hart, a carpenter, shellfish purveyor, oyster hatchery worker, and entrepreneur.
