Calling a function in a clips timeline

This seems like it should be the simplest thing in the world, but it’s not working: I have a more complex example but I set up a simple one to test and it fails as well.

I made a circle on the main stage, made it a movie clip and made it’s instance name “circle”. I went to it’s timeline and typed on the first frame:

function hello(){
trace(“hello”);
}

I went to the root and put on the first frame _root.circle.hello();, and I don’t get any “hello” output.

What am I doing wrong? This should be so simple! Why can’t I call a function in another MovieClip’s timeline?