Deanna Dunagan

Age: "I don't tell. And the reason I don't is that nobody can divorce that [number] from who you are. It starts getting that way in your 40s."

Currently: Playing Violet Weston, the pill-popping, meaner-than-a-snake matriarch in Tracy Letts' acclaimed family epic August: Osage County.

Hometown: Monahans, Texas. "It's 36 miles west of Odessa, where Friday Night Lights was set, and 60 miles west of Midland, where George Bush is from."

Lone Star Lady: "My heritage is a long line of Southern Baptist and Methodist preachers—who were all just frustrated actors," Dunagan begins, when asked about her background. "My dad was a Coca-Cola bottler and president of the Texas Historical Association. He wrote history as his avocation." Like a good southern girl, Deanna got a degree in music education and married young, but the union didn't last, and her parents agreed to fund graduate studies at the Dallas Theater Center after her divorce. Dunagan breezes through the next section of her resume—"I lived in Mexico while I was writing my thesis and was engaged to a bullfighter"—and goes on to explain that she honed her skills at regional theaters such as the Asolo in Florida and the Actors Theatre of Louisville before trying her luck in New York. The bullfighter moved to Spain.

Please Stand By: A star of the Chicago stage for more than two decades, Dunagan is quick to point out that August: Osage County is not her Broadway debut. "In 1979, I was an understudy at Circle in the Square in Shaw's Man and Superman," she says. "George Grizzard, Philip Bosco, Richard Woods and Mark Lamos were in it. One night I got to the theater three minutes late for half hour, and they said, 'You're going on.' Ann Sachs was sick. I was terrified! But I said to myself, 'Just go out and say the words. These are fabulous actors; just feed them their lines.' And it was one of the best performances I ever gave. The head of ICM, Milton Goldman, was in the audience and signed me the next day. They wrote a story about it in Back Stage."

Wonderful Windy City: Arriving in Chicago just before Christmas on a national tour of Children of a Lesser God, Dunagan felt at home immediately. She decided to put down roots and soon became a stalwart of the city's thriving theater scene. "I've worked at more than 30 theaters in the Chicago area, so it's always fresh," she says. "I'm a Gemini—we're communicators, but we have a short attention span. I enjoy being able to work on a show for three months and then go on to the next project. I get to do twice, if not three or four times, the number of plays I could do in New York. I love my career in Chicago."

The Parent Trap: For much of the three-plus hours of August: Osage County, Dunagan's drug-addicted character spews venom often hilariously at her three grown daughters, sister, various in-laws and a Native American maid. After an initial reading of the play left her "devastated," the actress repeatedly turned down the role of Violet. "I have knee problems and back problems and didn't think I could do it physically," she says of walking up and down the three-story house set. "And Violet is so vicious. The pills release her inhibitions, and she just lashes out. I played Mary Tyrone [in Long Day's Journey Into Night] when I was younger, but Mary is a piece of cake compared with Violet Weston." The overall strength of Letts' play made her reconsider, and Dunagan's performance won a Jeff Award in August's premiere production last summer at Chicago's Steppenwolf Theatre.

Big Apple Return: When Dunagan heard that August would transfer to Broadway, her initial response wasn't exactly what one would expect from an actress playing one of the season's juiciest parts. "I went into such a depression," she confesses. "For the last few weeks of the show [in Chicago] I was in physical pain, so I spent all my time after we closed seeing doctors, physical therapists and voice coaches, trying to get in shape to do this Broadway run." She missed a nephew's wedding during previews, but managed to fly to Cincinnati to see her grandson in a school play during the stagehands strike. And—happily—she's enjoying presenting the evil Violet to Broadway audiences. "It's a brilliant play—that's what makes it worth it. We want to share this wonderful work with more people. That's why we all came to New York."