Pg 30

Ah, the agony. Ah, the ecstasy! Ah, yes, says Mindy Cohn, 17 going into reruns: network teendom has its . . . excitements.

Consider this amazing story, told to a reporter over a crisp chicken salad. "it was just before Christmas," says Mindy, known to millions as Natalie Green in NBC's The Facts of Life, "and I was just going out. Then the phone rings. It's ... Scott Baio !!!!!!!!!!"

Er, yes. Baio. at the time head heartthrob on ABC's Joanie Loves Chachi, was calling to wish his fellow thespian a happy holiday.

"He said -- get this -- 'I want to wish you a Merry Christmas.' I'm freaking out! I have TEARS Streaking down my face! I said, 'Oh. Scott, don't hang up!' I'm having a coronary. I'm bawling! I'm saying:'Mindy, get hold of yourself!' " Even at the memory of this fateful phone call, her chubby cheeks redden, her brown eyes glint alarmingly.

"For someone in his position in life... for him to call me ...!" Her hands flutter helplessly in the air, then grip her temples. "I died. I really died. Can you believe it?"

Yes, believe it. For Mindy -- who's spent nearly a quarter of her young life cracking wise in FOL's imaginary private school -- is that rarest of child actors, a real kid despite the make- believe. Not for her, thank you, the seamless image of a Baio or a Brooke Shields. The doubts and delights of adolescence, real-world division, are upon her.

Never mind, for a moment, that she's a talented, vivacious performer so popular that her fan mail pours in by the bushel. "l'm not one for self-esteem," says Mindy, when asked why Baio's call was such a shock. "I don't think I'm attractive. I don't think I'm funny." Indeed, though no one associated with Facts will admit it, these twin doubts form the darker foundations of Natalie's comic character: an intelligent teen-ager, warm and outgoing, joking frantically to hide the obvious non-resemblance between herself and the models in Seventeen magazine.

"There's a lot of Mindy in Natalie," agrees Pam Cohn, Mindy's older sister. who was her on-set stand-in last season. Both Mindy and her alter ego struggle-somewhat ambivalently -- with a weight problem ("Mindy will lose it when she's ready," says her mother, a little nervously); both agonize for the record over their problems with I the male sex. Not the qualities usually found in Hollywood's corps of windup child stars; which is why, perhaps, the story of her career is so atypical.

"Sometimes I wonder," says Mindy, "how I got here at all." Unlike her three costars (Lisa Whelchel, Nancy McKeon, Kim Fields), Mindy was not a working actress when her "big break" arrived. Far from it: the second daughter of Ina and Nat Cohn, a well-to-do Los Angeles couple, she was headed for a normal adolescence when lightning struck.

"The outgoing personality was always there," says Ina Cohn, a petite attorney (Mindy more closely resembles her father, a tall, solidly built paint-company executive). "When she was 4, we went with her to Disneyland. When she heard the jazz band, she started jumping around and snapping her fingers, oblivious of the fact that she was attracting an audience. She wasn't doing it to show off, she was just having a good time." Yet ·the Cohn's resisted suggestions that she try out for commercials and the like. Up to ninth grade, Mindy's sole acting credit was a school production of "Godspell."

In the summer of 1979, she was taking an advanced science course at the Westlake School for Girls in Be'l Air. One day, completely unheralded, actress Charlotte Rae, who plays the girls' housemother, Mrs. Garrett, on Facts of Life, showed up with the series' producers. They wanted to interview private-school students to get ideas for scripts. "We weren't looking for actresses," says Rae. But after she asked Mindy a few questions, something clicked. "l'd envisioned a character called Natalie,"says Rae. "The best friend of the cutie-pie. Funny, down-to-earth. And Mindy was so adorable, I knew she was right. The only question was: could she act?"

Says Mindy of this epochal moment: "To this day, I don't understand it. I ask Charlotte:'Why did you pick me?' "

This is not a question on many lips. "Ooh, Mindy! Ooh, Natalie!" shout a gaggle of 4 and 10- year-olds, coming across the star in a Universal Studios corridor. "We're extras," explains one moppet, holding out a slip of paper for her autograph. Mindy, towering above this brood, signs patiently; to them, it's obvious, she's a sort of grande dame of the sitcom.

Four years is a long time when you're young. On the strength of her schoolroom nonperformance, 13-year-old Mindy was asked to read -- and then take a screen test -- for the new show's producers. The test led to a steadily increasing role in the original eight-girl version of Facts. "She taught herself [how to act] on the job," says Rae.

Actually; she had some help on the set, and in the show's second year, when four of the other girls were released, Mindy's role was expanded. She now makes more than $10,000 per episode for acting out the traumas of teendom. In the past two seasons, episodes emphasizing her role have dealt with' abortion, adoption, drugs and drinking. But hey, folks, lighten up! "l'm not a negative person, really," says Mindy. We're talking about someone quite famous-in certain sitcom circles-for the duration and intensity of her mid-rehearsal giggling fits.

"She's real crazy and giddy and laughing all the time," says costar and "close friend" Lisa Whelchel. On the set, large chunks of leisure time are consumed by hugging, lap-sitting and Sony Walkman listening. On taping days, there is much walking about in pink bathrobe and fuzzy slippers, and many trips are made to her dressing room, a photographic shrine to the godlike Baio and another sex symbol young movie star Matt Dillon.

Off the set? Priority one, all parties agree, was graduation from her real-life private school, which she accomplished this spring. Unlike the other girls, who received on-set tutoring, Mindy shouldered a full course load last year by attending classes four hours a day. "I've already completed five college-level courses," she says proudly. "l'd rather do that than sit in a trailer doing homework.

Priority two (well, perhaps one and; half) is expressed just as firmly. "l'd really like a boy friend," she says. For a while this spring her hopes were focused on "this guy from Beverly Hills High School I like a lot Yesterday was his birthday, and I made a vow never to call guys, but I called him, and we had a very good conversation. And I said to him:'l'm so embarrassed to be calling you.' And he said: 'Why?' "

Why, this sounds just like real life, not the half-hour weekly version! So you can excuse Mindy's cohorts for getting things a tad mixed up. "This year I was in New York," recalls Mindy, "and this girl my age came up to me on the street.

"She says:'l'm really having trouble in biology. Do you know anything about the circulatory and respiratory systems?'

'And I say:.'Why are you asking me this?' She says, 'Gee, I don't know.

"So I'm standing there, out on the sidewalk, going:'Well, there's the chambers, and the valves, and the atrium is connected to the ventricles...."

Have a heart, Scott, and call again. You've got her number, right?