AS soon as Selena Gomez’s “Wizards of Waverly Place” contract is up, she is so done with TV.
“I think this’ll be the last series that I do,” says the 16-year-old (going on 17 next month) star of the hit Disney Channel show and next week’s TV movie, “Princess Protection Program.”
“I’m going to try to pull a Natalie Portman,” Gomez says, keeping her fingers crossed that she’ll get into and graduate from her “dream” school, Northwestern University.
“Natalie went to Harvard while shooting ‘Star Wars,’ ” she says, making it clear she’d like to move on to movies eventually.
“I don’t know how she did it. I want to have lunch with her and ask her — that seems like a bunch of stress right there.”
Gomez isn’t looking for any specific role. Just something different from Alex Russo, the bratty sorceress in training she plays on “Wizards” — although, “I am very happy to get back to playing her! I miss her very much,” she says.
“I’m going to make that transition slowly,” Gomez says. “I’m not going to immediately go do something that’s way off the charts, because my goal is to keep my audience and have them grow with me.”
Although Gomez hasn’t taken the SATs yet, the home-schooled high-school senior has her heart set on studying theater and maybe even taking a journalism class. “I would love to do [news reporting], go overseas or something,” she says.
Until then, the teen is jamming as much work as she can into the 10½ hours a day she’s allowed to work under child labor laws.
Filming on the third season of “Wizards” is about to begin — it airs in August — and she’s putting the finishing touches on her debut CD, due out this fall.
“I don’t really like to rest too much,” Gomez admits. “If I’m resting in LA, I tend to miss home [in Texas] a lot and that’s not good for me, because then I get sad and I miss my family. I do constantly like to work. I believe that it keeps me going and makes me happy. ”
One thing that doesn’t put a smile on her face is the swirling speculation surrounding who she may or may not be dating. It’s a subject she’s never been big on discussing and she won’t name names.
“I understand it’s a big deal, but I’m not marrying anybody I’m dating when I’m 16, so I don’t think it should matter,” Gomez says, adding that she is “100 percent” single now.
“Of course, I have crushes and go on dates, but I’m focusing on my work — I don’t need that in my life.”