Amir Arison

Hometown: Fort Lauderdale, Florida

Currently: Starring as Vijay, a newlywed on a quest to find the perfect gift for his bride, in Charles Mee's new musical Queens Boulevard at Signature Theatre Company.

School Spotlight: Arison fell in love with performing at Fort Lauderdale's Pine Crest School, alma mater of stage and TV favorites Kelsey Grammer and Jayne Atkinson. "I did a play in sixth grade called My Robot Buddy, where I played a doctor who invents a robot friend for a child," he recalls. "That's where I got my first big laugh onstage, and when it happened, I was like, 'Oohh, this feels good.'" Arison shares a special bond with his private school's starry alums: "There's a drama award I won my senior year that [Grammer and Atkinson] both won too," he says with a proud grin.

Dr. Mom: While still in high school, Arison landed an agent and began pursuing TV and film work, with some slightly sneaky help from his supportive mother. "My agent would beep me," he explains, "and I'd call my mom, who's a physician, and she'd call the school as my doctor and sign me out, saying I had an appointment, so I could drive to Miami and do my auditions." Earning his SAG card at age 16 helped ease his father's mind that Amir had found his calling: "My dad was always like, 'This is a good hobby, but you're a smart kid; maybe you could do something else.' Then I did a national commercial and he started seeing the checks and was like, 'Hmm, maybe you could try to get some more of these!'" Arison's willingness to put his budding career on hold while earning an English degree from Columbia didn't hurt, either.

Down the Boulevard: In Queens Boulevard, Arison plays Vijay, a young man whose wife, Shizuko Michi Barall, incidentally the wife of playwright Mee, receives a beautiful "Flower of Heaven" on their wedding day— and asks her groom to get her another one, setting in motion a surreal and strange adventure down the titular boulevard. "Queens is the most bizarre place, because there are all these people living together who have nothing to do with each other," he muses. "Chuck [Mee] calls it 'our only example of the global village, all of these people smashed together and forced to live with each other.' My character has to confront, deal, accept and befriend people he'd never normally interact with. And he sort of comes back a better, richer man as a result of it."

The Mystery of Mee: Queens Boulevard's variety of characters, locations and bursts of music and dance which range from a haunting Gallic siren song to ABBA's "Dancing Queen" create a theatrical experience that Arison admits was more than a little daunting at first. "One day I was beating myself up," he says, "and I just cried out to our director, 'I really need your help. I have no idea how to untangle this scene!' But Chuck purposely puts things in his plays that are almost unstageable, because it forces you to really dig deep. Once you've used all your actor tools and instincts and you're out of those sorts of answers, therein lies the answer. It's about embracing the unembraceable."

True to Yourself: Though he's tackled roles ranging from King Ferdinand in Shakespeare's Love's Labour's Lost to a terrorist in Theresa Rebeck and Alexandra Gersten-Vassilaros' Omnium Gatherum, Arison admits that his name and distinct look can raise questions professionally—some of which strike him as irrelevant. "I can't tell you about the number of experiences I've had dealing with my name or my skin tone," he says. "It's been a blessing, and it can also be difficult. Frank Langella once said, 'I don't like knowing too much about an actor because I stop watching the performance and start watching the actor.' I never want my story to get in the way of the story, so I shy away from [discussing] my personal ethnic background. Don't get me wrong—I'm completely proud of who I am and my family—but it's a tricky thing to navigate, and I haven't quite solved it."

Theater Trumps TV: Arison has managed to appear on all three versions of Law & Order, but he swears he has no intention of abandoning the stage. "I went to L.A. for two months before I got this job," he says, "and I realized how excited I was to come back to a play. If I haven't done one for a while, I start to get antsy and neurotic and depressed. And usually when I do a play, I get antsy, neurotic and depressed, but in a positive way," he quips. "It is a little bit of a dream to have the regularity of a TV series job—but I'll be a theater actor my whole life."