Patina Miller in Sister Act

Age: 24

Hometown: Pageland, South Carolina, though her mother, a blues singer-turned-minister, has recently relocated to Augusta, Georgia.

Currently: Wowing audiences at the London Palladium in the musical Sister Act in which Miller makes not just her British theater debut but marks the first time that the 2006 Carnegie Mellon graduate has taken the leading role in a show. "Can you believe it?" Miller asks rhetorically, speaking late one afternoon from her dressing room in which she is preparing to play Deloris Van Cartier, the feisty, sassy "sister" originated on screen by Whoopi Goldberg. "I'm just so thankful. As I was growing up, I always said, I'm going to work. I always knew I'd have something like this." How does she feel now that it's happened? "I'm just so happy and so blessed."

Fabulous Baby: Miller actually appeared in the two previous American stage incarnations of Sister Act, first in Pasadena, California, and then in Atlanta, appearing in the ensemble of both. Now that she has graduated to the leading role, Miller speaks of the lavish production as "a different show than when it was trying out; it's grown so much, you know?" Part of the change lies in a rethinking of the starring role. "At the time, I think they felt they had to stay with a sort of Whoopi Goldberg image," Miller says of her part as a nightclub singer on the run who finds sanctuary with a community of musically challenged nuns. "There's only one Whoopi Goldberg. What I wanted was to create something new and something and fresh"—which includes rocking out on a disco-heavy original score from Alan Menken and Glenn Slater in which the musical styles of Donna Summer, Gloria Gaynor and the Weather Girls (to name just a few) are fashioned anew.

At the Crossroads: Miller was in the 2007 concert performance of Hair in Central Park, playing Dionne and kicking off the song "Aquarius," and returned to the Delacorte for last summer's longer run, which led to the current, Tony-winning Broadway transfer. Continuing on with that production was very much an option when the offer to cross the Atlantic with Sister Act came through last fall. "It was a trying time," says Miller, who admits to "really having to think about what it was I wanted. [It was] kind of scary, even though this was the moment I had been waiting for. I thought this is a great position to be in." She soon traded her apartment in Queens for a home in south London's trendy Borough. "This is my big coming-out party, and I'm just so thankful I'm here."

Whoopi Goldberg and Patina Miller

Some American Abroad: How has Miller dealt with being the lone outsider to a sizable company of Brits, or foreign-born British residents, that includes Wicked's Katie Rowley Jones as the slow-to-blossom Sister Mary Robert and local legend Sheila Hancock inheriting Maggie Smith's screen role as the tough-minded Mother Superior? "My first few months, it was hard. I mean, yeah, I'm doing this lead role in this new musical, but it was frightening because I wasn't close to anything I knew . All my friends seemed so far away." Hancock, Miller reports, became a source of strength: "Being with Sheila has helped on so many levels—personally, just her advice because she knows what it's like. This being my first gig, I would have it with no one else but Sheila. I knew I was in safe hands the minute she walked into the room."

On the Record: Miller speaks candidly of wearing herself out soon after Sister Act opened, which was followed almost immediately by the recording of the cast album—and Miller needing to take some time off. "It was a little bit too much, and I had to take some time to put myself back together. As much as I wanted not to be off, we are human and sometimes it can be too much." Restored to full health, Miller talks of her desire to record her own album, citing India.Arie, Donny Hathaway and Janis Joplin as three separate but equal musical passions, with Aretha Franklin and Tina Turner as “inspirations." In November, her friend and "mentor," Billy Porter, will come to London to help with Miller's London cabaret debut in the Prince of Wales Theatre's Delfont Rooms. Not bad for someone who, the actress laughs, was named for a character off TV. "My name means 'aging beauty' and refers to a finish, actually, but my mother had no clue it was that." Instead, the actress reports, "[my mother] used to watch soap operas a lot, and her favorite character on General Hospital was named Patina. So she thought it was only right to name me that." Whatever the reason behind that singular first name, the girl sounds good.