Broadway Star Daphne Rubin-Vega Welcomes Baby Boy
by Broadway.com Staff • Dec 7, 2004
Stage star Daphne Rubin-Vega and husband Tommy Costanzo have welcomed their first child. Son Luca Ariel was born December 5 at 6:57pm, weighing in at six pounds, six ounces.
"It was the most rewarding butt-kicking I've ever had!" Rubin-Vega told Broadway.com from the hospital. "But it was really worth it. You go through the pain of letting out a bowling ball and you get this beautiful baby. Tommy and I gave each other a gift from God. It's truly amazing."
Rubin-Vega first exploded on the theater scene in the original off-Broadway and Broadway cast of Rent as drug-addicted heroine Mimi, a role that she helped shape in early readings of the musical alongside late composer Jonathan Larson. For her work in the show, Rubin-Vega won a Theatre World Award and received Tony and Drama Desk award nominations for Best Leading Actress in a Musical. She received her second Tony nomination earlier this year for her dramatic work in Nilo Cruz's Anna in the Tropics, having also appeared in the Pulitzer Prize winning playwright's Two Sisters and a Piano at the Public Theatre in 2000. Other noteworthy stage appearances include Broadway's The Rocky Horror Show revival, Fucking A at the Public Lucille Lortel Award nomination, Gum at the Women's Project Theatre, Free to Be...You and Me at the Drama Dept., last season's Between Us at Manhattan Theatre Club and Randy Newman's Faust at La Jolla Playhouse. On the big screen, Rubin-Vega has appeared in the studio films Wild Things and Flawless and in many indies, including I Like It Like That, Lotto Land, Skeleton Woman and Virgin.
In her teens, Rubin-Vega was a member of the chart-topping pop trio Pajama Party, which is how she first met Costanzo, the brother of singing partner Marialisa Costanzo. Friends for years, the pair began dating seriously in the late '90s and were married in September 2002. Luca Ariel is the couple's first child.
"It was the most rewarding butt-kicking I've ever had!" Rubin-Vega told Broadway.com from the hospital. "But it was really worth it. You go through the pain of letting out a bowling ball and you get this beautiful baby. Tommy and I gave each other a gift from God. It's truly amazing."
Rubin-Vega first exploded on the theater scene in the original off-Broadway and Broadway cast of Rent as drug-addicted heroine Mimi, a role that she helped shape in early readings of the musical alongside late composer Jonathan Larson. For her work in the show, Rubin-Vega won a Theatre World Award and received Tony and Drama Desk award nominations for Best Leading Actress in a Musical. She received her second Tony nomination earlier this year for her dramatic work in Nilo Cruz's Anna in the Tropics, having also appeared in the Pulitzer Prize winning playwright's Two Sisters and a Piano at the Public Theatre in 2000. Other noteworthy stage appearances include Broadway's The Rocky Horror Show revival, Fucking A at the Public Lucille Lortel Award nomination, Gum at the Women's Project Theatre, Free to Be...You and Me at the Drama Dept., last season's Between Us at Manhattan Theatre Club and Randy Newman's Faust at La Jolla Playhouse. On the big screen, Rubin-Vega has appeared in the studio films Wild Things and Flawless and in many indies, including I Like It Like That, Lotto Land, Skeleton Woman and Virgin.
In her teens, Rubin-Vega was a member of the chart-topping pop trio Pajama Party, which is how she first met Costanzo, the brother of singing partner Marialisa Costanzo. Friends for years, the pair began dating seriously in the late '90s and were married in September 2002. Luca Ariel is the couple's first child.