A few years ago, Meyers, who played Susan Saint James's daughter Emma McArdle on Kate & Allie from '84 to '88, was in a nostalgic mood and returned to the theater where the show was taped. She found she couldn't go home again. The building is now the home of the Late Show With David Letterman, and the doorman wouldn't let her in.

"I'm like, I came here every day for five years," she says. "He was like, 'Sorry.'   He didn't believe me."   Since graduating from Yale (her TV earnings paid the tuition) in '93, Meyers, now 29, has appeared in TV movies and written an unpublished children's book, which Jeremy Irons recorded on tape. "I kept listening to the beginning over and over," she says. "'By Ari Meyers.'   'By Ari Meyers.'"

Although she has relocated to West L.A., Meyers credits her Manhattan upbringing with keeping her grounded. "It wasn't a very show business atmosphere," she says. These days, when she tunes into reruns, "it's like having moving baby pictures. You see yourself at different stages and go, 'Oh, God! My hair was like that?'"