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Nina Arianda, star of Broadway's 'Born Yesterday,' takes a break between rehearsals. Who's that girl?
Watching people pass by the Cort Theatre on W. 48th St., where "Born Yesterday" begins previews on Thursday, you can practically see thought balloons popping up over pedestrians' heads as they scan the stars' faces gazing out from the marquee.
That's Jim Belushi — he's the big lug from "According to Jim." That's Robert Sean Leonard — he's the good-looking doc from "House." That's Nina Arianda — she's the, uh, well, hmmm ... Who's Nina Arianda?
She's a 26-year-old actress who was born in Manhattan, grew up in New Jersey and Germany and has lived in Williamsburg the past three years. She's about to make her Broadway debut as Billie Dawn, the scatterbrained ex-showgirl in Garson Kanin's 1946 play. It's a role made famous on stage by Judy Holliday, who won an Oscar for the 1950 film version.
At a time when a play can cost between $2 million and $4 million to mount on Broadway, it's rare that producers are willing to cast a relative unknown. Plays tend to be all-star affairs. Banking on a fresh face and talent takes guts by the powers-that-be and director Doug Hughes. It's a very risky move.
But anyone who saw Arianda a year ago in her breakthrough performance in the play "Venus in Fur" gets that it's a calculated risk and understands why they took the chance.
Playing a mystery woman-goddess-dominatrix in the David Ives comedy, Arianda earned comparisons to everyone from a young Meryl Streep to a young Barbra Streisand and the sort of rave reviews actors dream of (even ones who insist they don't read them).
Especially actors, like her, who were fresh out of NYU with no credits to their name — even if they've been studying acting since they were 4 years old. Growing up in Clifton, N.J., Arianda's first language was Ukrainian; she took children's theater classes to improve her English.
"I read the script for 'Venus' and I instantly became possessive," says Arianda, who'd been working as a hostess at Orsay to make ends meet. "I kept saying, 'I have to do this play.' And I entered the room for the audition with that mentality."
It worked. As the play's director, Walter Bobbie, recalls it, "Nina Arianda walked into her audition for 'Venus in Fur' completely unknown to us, and within seconds David Ives and I were breathless," he says. "Intelligence, spontaneity, emotion, flawless comic instinct, all wrapped in the body of Venus.
"No callback," he continues. "Her audition was like a peek into her future. We hired her immediately and couldn't wait for rehearsals to begin. And then it only got better."
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