NINA ARIANDA (CONTINUED) »
“I’D NEVER READ SOMETHING AND BEEN SO ENTHRALLED BY WHERE A CHARACTER COULD GO.” — Nina Arianda
T
he daughter of Ukranian immigrants, Nina Arianda was born in Manhattan but raised in nearby Clifton, New Jersey. Playtime for young Nina was never a distraction; it was serious work, even at the age of three. While most children play dress up and make believe with their toys, Arianda had her dolls reenact Les Misérables — the first Broadway show she’d seen — in its entirety. Arianda’s lifelong love of performance led her to AMDA’s Studio Program, where she studied in the Conservatory before graduating in 2004. She continued her training and education, eventually earning an MFA from NYU’s Tisch Graduate Acting Program. In 2010, she debuted Off-Broadway in the lead role of Vanda (an aspiring actress engaged in a fierce psychosexual struggle with her director) in Venus in Fur. In his notes on her audition sheet, the show’s director Walter Bobbie called Arianda, “the real thing,” declaring her, “bold, sexy, funny.” The performance was immediately buzzworthy, the biggest debut splash on New York stages in many years. Director David Hughes told The New Yorker that seeing Arianda perform for the first time was “what it must have been like to walk into the Lion and see Barbra Streisand in 1960… There was so much fire coupled
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with so much technique.” Hughes was so taken with Arianda that he cast her in her Broadway debut, the lead role of Billie Dawn in Born Yesterday, starring opposite James Belushi and Robert Sean Leonard. The critical and audience raves were unprecedented. After the show’s premiere, stage and screen veteran Liza Minnelli took Arianda’s hand and proclaimed, “This woman has just changed Broadway.” Arianda earned her first Tony Award nomination for the fiery, head-turning performance. Other accolades followed, including an Outer Critics Circle Award, being named 2011 Stage Star of the Year by New York Magazine and leading Forbes Magazine’s “Top 30 Under 30” list in entertainment. A mere year later, Arianda became the youngest actress in Tony Awards history to receive back-to-back nominations. She ultimately took home the statue for Best Actress in a Lead Role for reprising the role of Vanda in the Broadway run of Venus in Fur. In her memorable Tony acceptance speech, a beaming and blushing Arianda showed that her runaway success is tempered with charm. She confessed to presenter Christopher Plummer that he was her first crush. Now one of the most talked about and sought-after actors in New York, Arianda
has turned in solid film performances in Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris, Win Win, and Tower Heist, as well as television appearances in “The Good Wife” and “30 Rock.” Arianda is slated to grace the big screen in 2013 as Italian filmmaker Federico Fellini’s wife and muse in Fellini: Black and White, starring opposite a cast of heavy hitters including Peter Dinklage and Oscar nominees William H. Macy and Terrence Howard. She has also been cast as Janis Joplin in the highly anticipated biopic Janis, in which she’ll perform the iconic rocker’s songs. (Such well-known stars as Pink and Zooey Deschanel were also reportedly considered for the coveted title role.) When did you know that you wanted to be a performer and how did you go about it? It started very early when I was young playing make believe. It was just a little out of hand. Believe me, I took playtime very seriously. I started studying and going to classes very young. What’s the most important lesson you learned at AMDA? The fear of God was put in me by the program. I’m already meticulous about approaching the work, and you can never be too prepared, but at some point you do have to let go and just play.
PHOTO: JOAN MARCUS
Arianda with Venus in Fur costar Hugh Dancy
on her Tony-winning Venus in Fur role