Daphne Rubin-Vega first lit up Broadway with her debut as Mimi in the original cast of "Rent", for which she won the Theater World Award, and the Tony and Drama Desk nominations as best actress in a musical.
She won the Blockbuster Award for her role as Kevin Bacon's partner cop in "Wild Things", with Matt Dillon, and she was Robert De Niro's love interest in "Flawless".
After leaving "Rent" in 1997, her first album of original music "Souvenirs" for Polygram's now defunct Mercury label was cut. Daphne continues to play with her band around NYC. They're called DRV.
In Karen Hartman's "Gum", she played a Middle-Eastern girl dealing with the repressed attitudes of a culture where not only is gum forbidden, but where women have virtually no freedom. She also appeared as Sofia in Nilo Cruz' "Two Sisters and a Piano", where her character was under house arrest in Cuba.
"These characters have given me the opportunity to play some very spirited women confronting everything from HIV/AIDS (Mimi in Rent), to women living under the Taliban (Rahmi in Gum) and how they express their freedom despite limitations imposed by their respective cultures." Notes Rubin-Vega, "They inform me as much as I embody them. It's an education both as an actress and as a human being".
In 2001, Rubin-Vega returned to Broadway again as Magenta in "The Rocky Horror Show" at the Circle in the Square Theater. The musical, based on the cult movie classic, also featured Tom Hewitt, Raul Esparza, Joan Jett, Dick Cavett and Sebastian Bach, among others.
Born in Panama, Rubin-Vega moved to New York's Greenwich Village with her mother and stepfather when she was a child. A self-described "club kid", her career got an early start when she began singing with a girl group called, Pajama Party, and an all Latino comedy troupe called El Barrio USA at Caroline's comedy club.
Rubin-Vega's life and career turned the proverbial corner when she landed the role of Mimi in a workshop called "Rent", which was writer/composer Jonathan Larson's contemporary version of the opera, "La Boheme". After her Mimi was proclaimed "the real thing", the show went on to begin its first life off-Broadway before moving to Broadway’s Nederlander Theater in January 1996.
Daphne Rubin-Vega won Best Actress in a Feature Film from the New York Independent Film and Video Festival of 2001 for her performance in "Skeleton Woman". She has since shot three independent films in NYC over the summer of 2002 including "Justice", seen at the Tribeca Film Festival in May 2003. For her role as Canary Mary, Daphne most recently received the Lucille Lortel nomination as best featured actress in Suzan Lori Parks' "Fucking A" at the Public Theater, directed by Michael Greif.
Daphne has just finished her role as Conchita in Nilo Cruz' 2003 Pulitzer Prize winner "Anna in the Tropics" on Broadway, and is proud to welcome her new son, Luca Ariel, into the world.
For more information, please visit Daphne's official website.