Rachel Berry, the teenaged would-be drama queen at the center of Fox’s song-and-dance series Glee, would pretty much kill to be Lea Michele, the actress who plays her. After all, Lea made her Broadway debut at eight, stepping in as young Cosette in Les Misérables after an open call. “I’d never sung before,” the New York City native says. “My friend was auditioning, and I was like, ‘I want to go too!’ I just took to it.”

She appeared in Ragtime and Fiddler on the Roof and won the starring role in Spring Awakening at fourteen, sticking with the show for almost eight years as it went from early workshops to the Great White Way. (Nothing’s set in stone, but she “really, really wants” to appear in the forthcoming feature film version.) Now 23, she lives in L.A. with Glee costar Dianna Agron (who plays on-screen rival Quinn) and a pair of cats named for two characters in Hair. Meanwhile Ms. Berry, though talented, is still striving (and stuck in Ohio).

full story: teenvogue.com