By Rob. Walton

WHO IS SHE?:

Chicago-born, Miami-raised bombshell Katie Finneran is the New York actress who's made a career of playing lingerie-clad sexpots on the Broadway stage. From a pin-up girl in Neil Simon's Proposals and the ambisexual Sally Bowles in Cabaret to Kevin Spacey's 180-proof call girl Cora in The Iceman Cometh, she's caught the attention of critics as well as audience members otherwise disinterested in the theater. Katie deservedly snagged the Tony this year for her show-stealing role in the slapstick bedroom farce Noises Off! as an actress who keeps bringing the show to a halt each time she loses a contact lens. This fall, look for her on the new CBS sitcom Bram and Alice with Alfred Molina (Boogie Nights) and Traylor Howard (Two Guys and a Girl).

WHAT HAS SHE DONE?:

Katie got her big break in show business with a lead role in the 1990 remake of George Romero's Night of the Living Dead ("I blow up in a truck," she boasted). She moved to New York, sight unseen, at the age of 19 and has been doing Broadway nonstop ever since, including My Favorite Year with Tim Curry and Lainie Kazan, John Guare's Bosoms and Neglect and Smell of the Kill with Kristen Johnson. When she hasn't been blowing the Big Apple away with her stage prowess, she's found time to appear in movies -- You've Got Mail with Tom Hanks and Liberty Heights for director Barry Levinson. On TV, you might have seen her on the second episode of Sex and the City (titled "Models and Mortals") or as the station owner's spoiled daughter Poppy on two episodes of Frasier.

WHY DO WE CARE?:

The blonde, blue-eyed Katie gives the classic bimbo a heart of gold and a mind as sharp as brass tacks. The up-and-coming starlet outshines even veterans Peter Gallagher (American Beauty) and Patti Lupone (Evita) in Noises Off, which she continues through July 14. Although she looks all tweedy and buttoned-down on Bram and Alice, we still see her inner sexpot.

Katie Finneran: Do I have to get naked for this interview?

Playboy.com: You're almost naked in your current Broadway comedy Noises Off. You wear little more than a black teddy and stockings as Brooke, the blind-as-a-bat actress in a second-rate touring company of a slapstick sex farce.

KF: People describe her as the dumb blonde bombshell. I don't really see her as dumb. I really see her as thinking of things that are more interesting than what is happening in front of her. She thinks she's a fabulous actress and that people have things to learn from her. I played her dumb as a board when we first started, which was kind of funny, but you got the joke right off the bat. The director said, "Why don't you make her as smart as she can possibly be? She didn't get this job because she slept with somebody." So she was the best actress who was willing to travel all around these little cities.

PB: You preceded Gina Gershon in Cabaret at Studio 54. Then you were the working girl Cora in The Iceman Cometh. Why do you think you keep getting cast in sexpot roles?

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