Actress Lauren Graham is blessed, but there remains one void.(Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service)

Byline: Luaine Lee

UNIVERSAL CITY, Calif. _ Actress Lauren Graham learned early on that you can't have everything you want.

The star of the WB's "Gilmore Girls" was a senior in high school who'd sparkled as the star of most of the school plays. But when they were casting "Once Upon a Mattress," she didn't get the lead. "I kind of took it a little bit for granted that I would get the next lead," she says, seated at a small, round table in an empty room of a hotel here.

"I didn't do a bad job. I just had senior-itis. I remember my teacher saying, 'You need to tell me now if I give you a smaller part, will you not do it?' And I did it."

That taught her a valuable lesson, she thinks. "That became the way I disciplined myself. If something didn't happen the way I wanted it to, I really did learn how to stick with it and try harder and to challenge myself in a bigger way," she says.

After six years of struggling, Graham landed "Gilmore Girls,'' which airs its 100th episode on Feb. 8, a status that most television shows never reach. But starring in a popular and consistent show, is not everything.

She would like to have an equally enduring relationship, she says. "I was with somebody for a long time, off and on, but we broke up not too long ago," she smiles, a half-shy shake of her head.