Kristen Bush

Currently: Playing Cordelia, the faithful youngest daughter of Kevin Kline's tragic patriarch in the Public Theater's production of King Lear.

Hometown: "Sterling, Kansas, USA, a town of about 2,000 people. I lived in the same house all my life."

Consider Yourself…at Home: Rather than begging her parents for acting lessons, Bush got her start in show biz at the urging of Mom and Dad. "We lived across the street from the theater at Sterling College, and my parents made me audition for Oliver! when I was 11," she recalls. "I got cast as a workhouse boy and one of Fagin's boys, and I knew from that moment that I loved to act. There was no looking back—and it's my parents' fault!"

Merry Old England: After graduating from the University of Kansas, Bush declined to join the hordes of young performers streaming into New York, choosing instead to enter the three-year acting program at London's Guildhall School of Music and Drama, alma mater of Eileen Atkins, Daniel Craig, Orlando Bloom, Ewan McGregor and many more. "I've always been an Anglophile," she says, "and quite honestly, I didn't feel I had enough that would set me apart from all the people I'd be competing with [after college]. I wanted to be the best actress I could be, and I'm so glad I had three more years of intense training."

As She Likes It: Bush's Guildhall experience paid off right away: When a union snafu prevented her from being cast as Rosalind's understudy in Sir Peter Hall's traveling production of As You Like It, the celebrated British director wrote a glowing recommendation letter that got Bush into the door at the Public Theater. "I guess I was destined to understudy Rosalind," she says now, "because I got the Central Park production two summers ago." Though she never went on for leading lady Lynn Collins, Bush recalls with a laugh, "They brought in 1,000 screaming high school kids one day and I got to do the first 45 minutes of it in costume, which was pretty cool."

Building a Resume: In less than two years, Bush has understudied Emily Bergl as Gabriel Byrne's daughter in A Touch of the Poet she never went on, starred in a well-received production of Richard Greenberg's The Violet Hour at the Old Globe in San Diego and played Estella opposite Kathleen Chalfant's Miss Havisham in Great Expectations. And now King Lear with Kevin Kline—pretty good, no? "I'm so impatient with myself that people have to hit me over the head to make me realize how much I've done already," Bush says sheepishly. The best part of sharing the stage with veteran stars: "I learn by watching them, and it's a relief to realize that you can not only be a great actor but have a good character [personally] as well. It's not all glitz and drama."

Lear 101: How many actors can boast that they've written a college term paper on the play they're doing? Bush can: "It was called 'The Versatile Lear,'" she says with a chuckle, "and the thesis was that you can bend Lear to fit any kind of approach you want to take." Director James Lapine chose to emphasize the play's familial relationships, she says: "It's such a timeless situation of fathers and daughters and how they relate to each other, which paved the way to be as honest as possible with the material."

Kline Time: "I've never been so nervous in my life!" Bush blurts when asked about her callback audition with Kevin Kline. "But I felt a strong connection with him and he put me at ease right away." The star keeps an eagle ear attuned at every performance: "If he can't hear a T in 'still soliciting,' he'll let you know, in the kindest way possible and then make a joke." Bush insists such comments are a good thing, not a bad thing. "It's not about acting choices and it's never intrusive," she says. "It's just that he is so devoted to the integrity of the piece. He's been a total joy to be around—and he's playing my dad, so I'm going to let him boss me around a tiny bit!" Besides, not many young actresses can say they've had Kevin Kline lament their death in the final scene of one of the greatest plays ever written: "I'm lying there as a corpse thinking, 'I will remember this moment forever.'"