Marissa Perry

Hometown: "the Waterbury, Connecticut, area"

Currently: Starring in her dream role as Hairspray's perseverant Tracy Turnblad—after pursuing the part for more than five years.

Good Morning, Baltimore! To say that Perry burst onto the Broadway scene last fall during her debut performance as Tracy standing by for then-star Shannon Durig would be...well, accurate. "My shirt popped completely open during the first number!" Perry says with a laugh. "I wear a fat suit, and I got a little overzealous and it burst wide open. I had to coyly turn my back to the audience and button up." Her wardrobe malfunction proved to be an auspicious omen for the young actress, who ended up going on for Durig 16 times during her crucial first weeks on standby. Five months after her seam-splitting premiere, the phone rang. "My agent said, 'I wanted you to know they're sending out breakdowns to the agencies for a new Tracy standby on Broadway.' And I was like, 'Why would they do that?' He goes, 'Because they want you to be Tracy full-time.' I started screaming and yelling!"

Stage Mother and Father: Though Perry's first solo performance came at age four, she made her onstage debut while still in utero. "My mother is a community theater actress and did shows while she was pregnant with me," Perry explains. "I was an embryo onstage!" Mom wasn't the only one with good genes to pass on: "My dad is an opera singer. He does weddings and such, but he's an accountant in real life. I literally grew up watching my parents perform." Perry dove into voice lessons and community theater, landing her first leading role as Annie Oakley in Annie Get Your Gun during high school. Despite their stage experience or perhaps because of it, her parents were concerned about Marissa's passion for performing. Luckily, her gun-slinging debut silenced any apprehensions. "My father was protective of me going into this career. But when I got off stage he just said, 'Wow, I was wrong. You really can do this.'"

The Big Tease: Dad was right: Two years later, at 17, Perry auditioned for a little Broadway musical called Hairspray, blowing away the casting team. Too green to go straight to the Rialto, she was sent to Toronto to rehearse with the show's Canadian cast in anticipation of joining the national tour. Shortly thereafter, she nabbed a role in Princesses, David Zippel's Broadway-bound musical about spoiled prep-school girls putting on a show. "I went with my heart, which told me to go with the other gig. So I missed out on the opportunity to go on tour [with Hairspray]," Perry recalls. Princesses abruptly fell apart after a 2005 run in Seattle, dashing her dreams. "We were all prepared to go to Broadway, and it was a real heartbreak not to have it come to pass." Other casting disappointments left the young actress unemployed. "I've never been opposed to walking away from this business," she says, "because you have to make a living. And so I just walked away."

You Can't Stop The Beat: Trading her dance shoes for textbooks, Perry enrolled in the CUNY system and began working toward a degree in psychology, taking the occasional theater gig on the side. "I was hesitant about going on any auditions, especially for Hairspray," she says now. But inevitably, the show came calling yet again when Vermont's Weston Playhouse began its search for a leading lady. "My agent said I should go and, if nothing else, show them what a good Tracy looks like." She did, nailing the audition and booking the job before she left the room—which is how she found herself face to face with Hairspray writers Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman on opening night. Thrilled with her performance, the two promised to help get her to Broadway, and they delivered. "Within a week of leaving Weston, I booked Broadway. I started less than a month later."

Full Circle: Now giving eight full-throttle performances as Tracy a week, Perry is savoring every moment. "I know that this might be it for me," she says of starring on Broadway. "I'm short and chubby; I'll always be the character actress. But here I am!" The generous young star goes out of her way to announce a new cast member's Broadway debut to the audience the way former co-star Jim J. Bullock did for her and enjoys backstage chats with co-stars/mentors Karen Mason Velma and Jenifer Lewis Motormouth Maybelle. Her Broadway journey has come full circle. "When I was 13, I went to one of the first performances of Thoroughly Modern Millie, and when Sutton Foster came out to take her bow I lost it! I was inconsolable. My mom asked what was wrong. I just looked at her and said, 'I know I can take the final bow. I can do it!' And here I am taking the final bow. It's pretty crazy!"