Child of the Corny

What's the worst part of being a direct-to-video starlet with a famous father? Well, for Ami Dolenz, featured in the just-released Life 101, it's not her dad — Monkee Micky Dolenz — nor is it the often cheesy material that's unavoidable in the video domain.

No, hers is a more traditional Hollywood dilemma: to peel or not to peel. Though the diminutive, lively 26-year-old actress often bemoans the fact that she ''still looks 12,'' she's had to fend off producers' almost constant suggestions that she bare her breasts for the camera. ''I now have a reputation where people just know that I won't do certain things, and they shouldn't even bother calling me in for them,'' Dolenz says over a light lunch at an Italian restaurant in Burbank, Calif. ''I wish I had been an actress at a time when this wasn't even an issue.''

Yet ever since her movie debut as a teen nerd who becomes a beauty queen in the 1989 Tony Danza comedy She's Out of Control, she's been safely clad in all her 12 features, including such icky fright fare as Pumpkinhead II: Blood Wings, Witchboard 2, and Ticks. Indeed, you'd think that another hazard of starlethood would be such nasties as giant insects and evil Ouija boards. Wrong. ''I got into horror movies mostly because they're my favorite movies to watch,'' Dolenz insists. ''I'd like to do a really good one, though.''

Dolenz credits her resolve to do things her own way to the fact that she didn't grow up in the limelight. Instead, she spent most of her childhood with her mother, former actress Samantha Dolenz, in Europe and Mexico. She found that time with Dad had its share of scary — and revelatory — moments. ''I remember when I was about 4 or so,'' she says, ''going to a place like Disneyland and seeing my dad get mobbed, and I would be grabbed and dragged to some dark corner, and hear him screaming for me. It was frightening. But it helped me learn at an early age that the desire for fame was a ridiculous reason to go into show business.''

So while her made-for-cable thriller Virtual Seduction will air this fall on Showtime, and she's hoping to develop a TV series for herself and her father, Dolenz has considered chucking performing in favor of writing a children's book. ''It's based on characters that my father invented for stories he used to tell me as a kid,'' she says. As she gobbles the last of her salad and has the waiter doggie-bag the remainder of her spaghetti (not for her three dogs, though — ''I'll give it to Dad,'' she laughs), it's clear that the best part about being this video starlet is not having to display any naked ambition.