People: Mar. 11, 1985

Some people graduate from Hollywood to superpower negotiations. Samantha Smith, 12, is doing it the other way around. Ever since Soviet Leader Yuri Andropov replied to her letter about world peace with an invitation to Moscow in 1983, the schoolgirl from Manchester, Me., has basked in international celebrity, chatting on TV talk shows and lecture podiums from New York to Tokyo, and writing a book about her peace initiative (Journey to the Soviet Union). Now Miss Smith is going to Hollywood. Starting later this month she will be filming the pilot of a new TV series called 55 Lime Street. In it she will play the daughter of Robert Wagner, an insurance investigator and horse breeder who is independently wealthy (Isn't he always?). Samantha's dad Arthur says he gave the parental thumbs-up after meeting Wagner and finding him to be "a family man, pleasant and low key." In fact, says Dad, Los Angeles was not at all what you might expect: "Everyone we met there was very down-to- earth, very reasonable, very real." Just regular folks like the rest of her grownup friends.