THE BROADWAY ACTORS
ADAM PASCAL, 25 (ROGER)
Pascal had never acted, but "I'm used to beating the shit out of my voice with a heavy-metal band." His band never snagged a record deal, but "RENT" will change his life. "It'll allow me to get my own apartment. I've always mooched off girlfriends."
DAPHNE RUBIN-VEGA, 27 (MIMI)
A vision in vinyl, Rubin-Vega hung out in clubs as a kid growing up in Greenwich Village. "I was a total fake ID, partying all night, full throttle pedal to the metal." Before "RENT," she appeared in Randy Newman's musical "Faust," and recorded a No. 1 dance hit, "I Found It." Now blessed with success, she's being "beat up" by publicity demands.
TAYE DIGGS, 25 (BENJAMIN)
Diggs' first break was playing a Caribbean singer at Tokyo Disney. Like his character who declares bohemia dead, he wonders about the preciousness of some artists. "How are they changing anything doing little shows in the Village that only their friends see? That why it's so great that we got to Broadway."
FREDI WALKER, 33 (JOANNE)
Walker once lived on 50 cents a day, but she's no longer into poverty chic: "I'm over 30, honey. It was cutre then, but not now." She grew up in St. Louis and spent her post-college years doing "avant-garde guerilla theater." She's tried screenwriting and wants to produce movies one day.
ANTHONY RAPP, 24 (MARK)
Rapp is such a convincing narrator he could be channeling Jonathan Larson. The Illinois native has squatted in the East Village, opened his door to anyone needing to crash, and lost friends to AIDS. He's been a working actor since the age of 6, but with "RENT" he fianally feels he's "crossed a threshold, gone through the looking glass."
IDINA MENZEL, 24 (MAUREEN)
Menzel doesn't love Maureen, but she understands her drive. "At first I thought she was a cold bitch, and I didn't want that, because that's how people sometimes perceive me." What she really wants is to sing with her bluesy rock band. She's never acted before, but she's sung at weddings since she was 15.
WILSON JERMAIN HEREDIA, 24 (ANGEL)
Originally a dancer, Heredia at first thought "RENT" sounded like a dead end. He auditioned because he needed the $300 a week. To prepare for his role as a transvestite, he rented "Paris is Burning" and "Lolita." "Anyone can mimic a drag queen," he says. "The work was in finding the soul, letting out the more female side of me that every male has if they're willing to let go."
JESSE L. MARTIN, 27 (TOM)
Martin didn't know what to make of "RENT" after the audition: "I was scared because I didn't really understand the script, but I decided to take the role, and lo and behold." Bred in Buffalo, N.Y., Martin has done Shakespeare on Broadway and soap operas on the tube. He's also developing one-man shows.
