Yaya DaCosta

Hometown: New York City

Currently: Making her professional stage debut opposite Leslie Uggams in Signature Theatre Company's revival of Leslie Lee's The First Breeze of Summer.

School Days: Exotic good looks and an Ivy League education? DaCosta—born Camara Yaya DaCosta Johnson—has both, thanks to a mixed-race heritage Brazilian, West African, Native American and Irish and her family's thirst for knowledge Mom runs the elite Central Montessori School in Harlem; Dad is a college professor. Raised in a rough neighborhood, DaCosta looked to theater and dance as creative lifelines. "Being skinny and getting good grades, I'd get made fun of," she recalls. "I wore hand-me-downs and had natural hair way before it was trendy. I was just not cool. My drama teacher's [actress Ann Ratray] class saved my life." DaCosta's stage debut came at age nine, as Hermia in a middle school production of A Midsummer Night's Dream. By 11, she was performing in educational films. "I [would make] $100 and go wow! For a kid, that was a big deal." Despite a growing desire to perform, acting took a backseat when DaCosta enrolled in boarding school at Northfield Mount Hermon and then Brown University, where she studied International Relations and African Studies.

Top Role Model: As graduation approached at Brown, a roommate encouraged DaCosta to apply for the third season of the reality TV series America's Next Top Model. "I didn't really watch TV, so I didn't know what I was getting myself into!" she says. The photogenic girl from the Ivy League stood out as one of the show's most regal and intelligent contestants, a role model rather than a potential tabloid queen. However, producers took care to edit her into the assigned "smarty-pants" role, much to DaCosta's chagrin. "Whatever I said [on camera] about how many languages I speak, or being a 'thinker,' I said because I was asked. You don't see the person asking the question—I would never have said all that in real life." She's quick to point out that parts of the show were taken out of context: "They never showed people getting along. It was only the catty stuff they would investigate." Regardless, DaCosta made it into the final two, losing the title to Eva Pigford.

Back to Reality: Down but certainly not out, DaCosta returned to New York and immediately began acting classes and auditions...without Top Model on her resume. "It wasn't a job and it wasn't acting. So to me, it's not applicable." She found work quickly, gracing the pages of Interview, Essence and Seventeen magazines, and appearing in ads for Target, Olay and Radio Shack, to name a few. But it was acting that called her, and DaCosta finally got her chance when she landed the role of LaRhette in 2006's ballroom dance-inspired flick Take the Lead, starring Antonio Banderas. "I knew that performing was what I wanted to do, but it was really hard for me to say 'I am an actor' before getting [that role]," she notes. Working with Banderas they spoke Spanish between takes gave her the experience necessary to land her next big role, as China Doll in the John Sayles musical film Honeydripper.

Just Do It: Filming in Alabama, surrounded by veteran castmates like Danny Glover, Charles S. Dutton and Ruben Santiago-Hudson, DaCosta soaked up every moment of the experience. "It was cool to learn what Southern hospitality really means," she says, recalling the camaraderie on set. During a conversation with Juilliard alum Lisa Gay Hamilton, DaCosta began to consider all the training she gave up to pursue a traditional education. "When I got back to New York I applied to every graduate acting program: Juilliard, N.Y.U., everything." Through auditioning, DaCosta realized that, just this once, school wasn't right for her. "I felt like the universe was putting too much in front of me that I wouldn't be able to take advantage of if I was back in school." She was right: Shortly thereafter, DaCosta landed a recurring role as Angie Hubbard's long-lost daughter Cassandra on All My Children.

Take A Bow: Now, after several years in film and TV, DaCosta is thrilled to make her theatrical debut in Signature's revival of The First Breeze of Summer. "I was thirsty to be on stage again!" she says. "On-camera work is great, but it's totally different." Working with director and Honeydripper alum Santiago-Hudson, DaCosta plays the demanding role of Lucretia, the young alter ego of Gremmar Edwards Tony Award winner Leslie Uggams, the ailing matriarch of an African-American family who harbors dark secrets about her past. "The idea of being a memory is amazing because my scenes are flashbacks, but they're a grandmother's memory of herself," DaCosta explains. "Sometimes people's memories of themselves aren't exactly how they were." The young actress hopes that Breeze, a play about truth, redemption and family, affects audiences the same way it has her. "I hope they walk away from the theater—it sounds so corny—loving each other a little more. It's a wonderful story people can relate to no matter what color they are."