Ventura County Star

    Kellie Martin isn't a doctor, but she played one on TV.  So after her gruesome exit from portraying third-year medical student Lucy Knight on ER -- her character was stabbed to death by a patient -- Martin prescribed her own antidote to the prime-time bloodletting:  She accepted the leading role in an independent film about a woman wrangling with a failing marriage and her less-than-helpful family.

    "I had decided to go back to school and was looking for possible things to do just before I left," said Martin, calling between classes at Yale University in New Haven, Conn.

    "I read this script and responded to the family and the character.  She's very different than I am."

    But making "All You Need," which will be shown Sunday and Wednesday during the Santa Barbara International Film Festival, wasn't without its painful moments.

    Martin, who recently had married former Yale classmate Keith Christian, found herself confronting the spectre of divorce through her character, Beth Sabistan.

    "It was so weird for me to play 'what if.'  I would call my husband and say 'Oh, this is terrible,'" Martin said, laughing.

    And then there was the Thanksgiving dinner scene, selected by test audiences as their favorite part of the film.  That surprises Martin, who has yet to see the completed movie.

    "It was the worst scene to shoot, so it's interesting that people love it so much," she said, laughing again.  "There's a saying in acting that you never want to do a dinner table scene.  No matter if it's 7 in the morning, you have to sit there in front of a big turkey dinner, or whatever, while they shoot everyone sitting at the table so the audience gets a taste of every character."

    In this case, the characters start discussing "things you don't usually talk about," which in turn leads to a family squabble, Martin said. "That happens in so many families during the holidays; maybe the audiences see themselves in these people."

    Martin plans to join Santa Barbara audiences and first-time feature director Randy Ser, who won an Emmy for his production design for Disney's mounting of "Rodgers & Hammerstein's Cinderella," when "All You Need" is given its world premiere screening. She's even looking forward to the post-screening question-and-answer session, a festival tradition.

    "It's a chance for people to see me in a very different role," said Martin, who was a child when she debuted on Father Murphy and soon after appeared as Becca Thatcher on the ABC series Life Goes On.  Similarly earnest roles in Christy and About Sara followed, along with an against-type portrayal of a murderer in A Friend to Die For.

    "This girl has been through a lot," Martin, said of her latest role.  "She finds out her husband's having an affair, and that turns her life upside down -- they've been together since she was 16 and now she's 28.  But she ends up not being bitter."

    Martin graduated from Newbury Park High School and still has family living in the Ventura County area.  During visits home, she likes to play tennis and to join her father for 10-mile hikes from Thousand Oaks to the beach.

    A self-described "gym rat" -- a trait she shares with her character in "All You Need" -- Martin also trained to run in the L.A. Marathon a couple of years ago.  But as race day neared, "I totally bagged it," Martin admitted with another of her frequent, easy laughs.

    Photography is another passion.  Martin, who will graduate in May with a degree in art history, toys with the idea of one day opening a photo gallery.  In the meantime, she'll settle for "writing a big senior essay" on Sally Mann, the contemporary photographer known for her controversial images of adolescent girls and landscape photographs of Virginia and Georgia.

    Martin said her classmates "totally leave me alone.  I live differently than they do.  Everyone is, like, 20 here.  I'm 25 now.  So that's weird.  And I'm married."

    So why did she put the breaks on a lucrative job on ER in favor of classes, mid-terms and late-night study sessions?

    "Acting is such an unpredictable business; I think you have to have a day job," Martin said.  "I am reading pilots and and independent film scripts and plays, but I don't know what I want to do next.

    "I do miss getting up in the morning and going to a set where the people I work with are like my family," she added.  "But I don't miss wearing makeup every day.  I enjoy being au naturel -- and wearing a ponytail."