Leigh Ann Larkin

Hometown: Pittsburgh, PA

Currently: Making her Broadway debut opposite Patti LuPone as Dainty June, the apple of Momma Rose's eye, in the Broadway revival of Gypsy.

Learn by Doing: A bubbly blonde with an Annie Hall-like laugh, Larkin began acting in community theater as a child, but her mother, thank goodness, was nothing like the volcanic Rose. “My mom was very supportive and came to every show, but she never forced me to do anything,” the actress says. “[Performing] was something I wanted from the minute I set foot onstage. I knew that I was going to major in musical theater, and I wanted to go to the best school I could get into.” Larkin chose the University of Cincinnati's famed College-Conservatory of Music, where her classmates included Tyler Maynard of The Little Mermaid and Ashley Brown of Mary Poppins. Coincidentally, the threesome toured together in the Disney revue On the Record. “I would never be where I am today without that school because it was really competitive,” she says. “You'd look all those talented people and think, ‘What do I need to work on to keep up?'”

King Arthur Reigns: Larkin first met Gypsy's legendary librettist Arthur Laurents at her audition for last summer's Encores! production of the show, which he was directing—and it did not go well. “I didn't know the show,” she admits, “and Arthur is the kind of director who knows exactly what he wants. At first he was not pleased with me at all,” she says with an all's-well-that-ends-well giggle. “He said, ‘You're too emotional; June is bored, she's over it.' Then he turned to someone at the table and said, ‘She couldn't take direction if she was paid.'” Turns out Laurents was just trying to elicit a strong performance from an actress he secretly liked. It worked: After Larkin plowed through an entire number, the 89-year-old director said, “That's what I wanted,” adding on the first day of rehearsal, “Where have you been all my life?” And the lovefest continues. “Arthur is the warmest, most amazing, most brilliant human being I've ever met,” Larkin says now.

Hello, Patti! Like many young musical actresses, Larkin grew up idolizing the woman who is now playing her overbearing mom. “I went to see [Patti LuPone] in concert when I was in the 11th grade—the tickets were a gift because I wanted to see her so bad. I used to listen to her in Anything Goes, and now I'm working with her!” Larkin exclaims. “On the first day of rehearsal, I saw her and thought, ‘OK, there she is. There she is,'” she says of LuPone in a nervous whisper. “After we did a read-through, she said to me, ‘You're so great,' and I was like, ‘No, you're so great!' She has been so supportive of me and everyone on this show. I love her.”

What Do You Do All Day? Though Larkin has worked pretty steadily since college—including a production of Guys and Dolls that went to China and Beauty and the Beast in her hometown—she occasionally has had to take survival jobs hostessing at restaurants. On one, she met her boyfriend, Clayton, the eatery's general manager. “Dating someone who is not in the industry has opened me up to a lot of real-people things,” she says with a laugh, explaining that her beau had seen only one Broadway show, The Phantom of the Opera, before Gypsy. “Clayton's from Arkansas, and he would say to me during rehearsals, ‘I don't understand what y'all do all day,'” she reports in a Clintonian drawl. “And it's hard to explain!” Unfamiliar with Broadway stars like Boyd Gaines and Laura Benanti, Clayton got excited only when he spotted the headshot of Bill Raymond, who plays Pop. “He said, ‘I know that guy! He plays the Greek on The Wire on HBO! You know him?”

June's Turn: Relaxing in the St. James Theatre dressing room she shares with Gypsy's trio of strippers, Larkin glances up at her lineup of age-inappropriate costumes, calling them a key to the character of June. “Look at how her mother makes her dress,” she says of a garish American flag-inspired frock, “and what her mother makes her do. I see June as somebody who has been smothered and pushed her whole life. In the end, she'll do anything to get away.” And now that Larkin does know Gypsy, she appreciates why it's considered the best of the best. “Arthur treats this as a play, and my goal is to act it as well as I can,” she says. “Every time we do it, we're like, ‘Arthur, this book!' It's absolutely perfect.”