by Nekesa Mumbi Moody
Associated Press
October 24, 1999

It doesn't take much to figure out why Taye Diggs makes women swoon.

Just one look at his smooth, unblemished skin usually does it. Or his taut, lean muscular body. Or that steamy shower scene in "How Stella Got Her Groove Back.''

But as he relaxes - fully clothed - in a pinstriped suit in a midtown hotel, the bespectacled Diggs professes not to understand what it is about him that makes women so hot and bothered.

"I try to intellectualize it, and you can't. ... A lot of it is the fact is that I don't feel like I'm worth someone screaming about,'' says one of People magazine's 50 Most Beautiful people.

What everyone's screaming about is a 29-year-old Rochester, N.Y., native who is fast becoming one of Hollywood's brightest new stars. His film debut in 1997 as Angela Bassett's sexy young Jamaican lover in "Stella'' made him an instant star - and a sex symbol. Since then, he's blazed the screen in "Go'' and "The Wood.''

In his new film, "The Best Man,'' Diggs plays a newly published author whose supposedly fictional book about love and romance threatens to wreak havoc on his best friend's nuptials as his old buddies try to decipher hidden clues about their own lives in the book. The Universal Pictures release opens Oct. 22.

The ensemble cast stars co-stars Nia Long, but Diggs gets top billing. Not bad for a struggling actor who was working at Tokyo Disneyland just a few years ago.

"I never would have thought that I would be working with Nia Long or Morris Chestnut ... Ryan Phillipe, cats who I would read about in these magazines,'' Diggs says. "I get to work with these people, and I'm still at a level where I still trip on that.''

It's a far cry from his childhood in Rochester, where he and his four younger brothers and sisters lived in the gritty part of the city. Young Scott Diggs (Taye is his nickname) liked to dance around the house, and his mother, who now teaches drama at Indiana University, recognized star quality in her son and sent him to Rochester's School of the Arts.

"My mother said, 'You're talented, so go to school so you can work on this,'' he remembers.

"I was upset because I wanted to go to a school that had sports. I wanted to play on the athletic teams and what not. But then I took all the classes - I took dance classes, I took singing classes and acting classes and enjoyed doing them all equally.''

It was then that the young Diggs began to develop as an entertainer. He also began to blossom as a young man and grew out of his awkward teen-age period.

"Before that school, I was a nerd,'' he says. "I wasn't very accepted, as far as a lot of the social groups are concerned, so I really found myself at that school. Friends that I have today, those relationships were formed there. It was a lot of fun.''

From the School of Arts, Diggs went to Syracuse University, and after he graduated, headed to New York City to pursue his acting dreams.

Diggs landed roles here and there, including a part in the musical "Carousel.'' But after working in New York for a year, he had a notion to see the world and so auditioned for a Caribbean cabaret bit at Tokyo Disneyland.

After his seven-month stint in Japan, Diggs hit pay dirt in 1996 when he won the part of the landlord Benjamin Coffin III in the original cast of the Pulitzer and Tony award-winning musical "Rent.'' Like just about everyone else, Diggs had no idea the musical would become a Broadway blockbuster.

"I was hyped because it was a gig. At that point, I had told myself that I didn't want to sing again, so I was a little annoyed that I had to sing. But it was a job ... and I was ecstatic to be working.

"Then, when it blew up, that's when the excitement came. It was like my first little dose of fame.''

But it was his role in "Stella,'' that put Diggs on the Hollywood map. It was a part for which his sexy good looks and chiseled body proved to be more of a draw than his acting abilities, including learning an accent that has people to this day believing he is a born and raised Jamaican.

Landing the role was a major coup for Diggs, who didn't think he had any hopes of getting it when he went in for his audition.

"I remember thinking, just go in there, do a good job so that the casting director knows you, and he'll keep you in mind for something else. And the director, he found something in me that he dug, and to this day, if I every win any Academy-type award, I will thank him, because if wasn't for him, I wouldn't be in the game right now.''

Diggs says he'll always remember his reaction when he found out he got the role.

"I just ended up jumping up and down on my bed, like pounding the bed so hard,'' he says.

"And I kind of miss that. Like, I'll never have that again, because once you do that first movie, nothing can compare.''

Besides roles in the upcoming movies "House on a Haunted Hill,'' "Mary Jane's Last Dance'' and "The Way of the Gun,'' Diggs also plans a return to the New York stage. He is set to star early next year in the off-Broadway version of the musical "The Wild Party,'' based on a jazz-era poem by Joseph Moncure March. (Another version is planned for Broadway in April.)

But theater remains his true love.

"Theater, it's do or die,'' he says. "You get out there, and it feeds you. ... It's truly acting.''

Taye still lives on Manhattan's Upper West Side and rides the subway, enjoying life with actress-singer Idina Menzel, who was nominated for a Tony for her role of Maureen in "Rent.'' The two met while appearing in the musical and have been dating ever since.

"I have all the people I need in my life right now,'' Diggs says. "I don't need anyone else. I have a really good friend, a best friend, I've got my girl and my family. And if I don't ever have another friend in life, I'm straight with that.