What she's thinking of most these days, along with some kind of familial move, is getting more involved with UNICEF, which her grandmother Helenka Pantaleoni helped to found. "She had been working for the Red Cross during World War II," Téa says, "and she knew somebody who was working at the UN when they were pulling that together. They decided what the world needed most was emergency children's relief."

Leoni's father now serves on the board of directors, and Téa says he's grooming her to take over that role someday. They went on a field visit to Honduras last summer that inspired her. While some of the children she met had seen Jurassic Park III and called her "chick-a-dino," most of them were simply grateful to the organization for clean water.

"In some places the word for clean water is 'UNICEF,'" she says. "It's amazing to me that kids collect all these boxes of pennies, and 50 years later we're in 146 countries. That's a very big deal. When things happen, we're already there and know how things operate and how to help."

She's trying to find a way now to pass on the spirit of her grandmother ‑- who was also a Broadway singer, a silent film star and a good pal of Eleanor Roosevelt ‑- to her daughter. "She was a really amazing woman," says Leoni, who shortened her name when she started acting after college. "She could really rally people."