Being a TV star can put life on hold. For Justine Bateman, that meant going to college decades after she and her Family Ties character Mallory Keaton.
"During my 'college years,' I was working on Family Ties and under contract to Paramount Studios," Bateman wrote on her Tumblr when received her UCLA acceptance. "Though I had done well in high school and gotten into a few colleges (actually, school was my #1 focus), the line producer had to sit me down and inform me that I 'could not just go to college.'"
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Bateman will be 50 when she graduates UCLA in the spring with a degree in computer science and management. She has acted consistently since her Family Ties days and wants to combine the essential areas in her life by starting her own entertainment tech company.
"When I graduate, I will either run a division of a company that is tech and entertainment together, or I'll get funding for my own company with a focus on taking current technology to film far more complicated stories," Bateman told The Hollywood Reporter. "The technology we have available is not being used, and we don't have to tell stories in a line anymore. We can tell them in the shape of a tree. I can't stand to see it not happen, and I'm going to make it happen."