NEW YORK - When Rebecca Faulkenberry was a little girl, she and her brother, Evan, would entertain themselves during a hurricane by acting out fairy tales from their favourite video series while their father, Terry, provided background music on his guitar.Rebecca thought it was great fun. It wasn't until she landed a role at age seven, as the youngest orphan in the 1992 production of 'Annie' at City Hall Theatre, that she discovered her play acting could be something much more.“I suddenly realised that this thing I did at home dressing up, singing, dancing was something you could do on stage, for a living,” says Rebecca. “And I knew that I wanted to do it more than anything else in the world.”Now, with undergraduate and graduate degrees in musical theatre and a list of international performances to her credit, the 27-year-old Bermudian with the wide, dimpled smile has the coveted role of Mary Jane in the Broadway smash hit 'Spider-Man:Turn Off the Dark'.Starring in eight shows a week, earning curtain calls and standing ovations, Rebecca is greeted at the stage door after every performance by throngs of audience members clamouring for her autograph. Her dream of a career on stage has come true.There's undeniable glamour - not everyone gets flown to Los Angeles to sing on 'The Tonight Show' with Jay Leno, or performs on 'Dancing With the Stars', or meets Tom Cruise, Bono and Michael Bublé - but there's gritty reality, too. As she sang in 'Annie', it's a hard-knock life. But for Rebecca, it's the life she wants.“Establishing a career on Broadway is a bit like investing in stocks instead of mutual funds,” she says with a laugh. “But I've never doubted I'd make it. You can't. You have to believe you can do it, and you will.”Theatre landlords can pull a show with a week's notice if they're not taking in a defined amount of box office receipts, Rebecca explains. Regardless of the terms of their contracts, actors can, overnight, find themselves without a job.“And there's not enough demand to meet supply,” she says. “There are so many actors and actresses vying for a few roles that being very good at what you do is taken as a given. Being chosen for a lead role is a matter of personality, or luck, or both.”In spite of landing the lead role in one of this season's most successful musicals, Rebecca spends her days nurturing her career.“I want to originate a role on Broadway,” she says as she crisscrosses Manhattan at a breakneck pace - at one point, choosing an emergency exit from the subway as the fastest way to the street, oblivious to the ear-shattering alarm that she's set off - to meet with producers, debrief with her manager and take a one-hour singing lesson. “Being the first actress to replace the original Mary Jane in 'Spider-Man' is awesome. But there's prestige and recognition in creating a role and I really want to do that.“I also want to do some episodics [non-recurring roles in a TV series]. I want to do some film work. And I want to write and record enough material to produce a CD.“Eventually, I want to get married and have children, but not before I have some stability in my career. And doing that takes time.”Rebecca begged her parents to let her audition for 'Annie', even though she was two years under the age limit.“There was a moment when Terry and I looked at each other,” her mother, Mary, says of her oldest child. “We realised that he had been an Olympic diving coach and I had been a ballet dancer, and we laughed. How could we deny her dream?“And there was no denying Becca a musical theatre experience after 'Annie'. We encouraged her and supported her, but didn't ever push. She pushed herself enough. ”“I had great reservations about working with a seven-year-old child in an adult production because of the demands it puts on everybody, including her,” says Gavin Wilson, who directed the production of 'Annie'.“I couldn't separate Rebecca from everyone else and baby her along. But it became very, very apparent that she knew instinctively how to move on stage. I only had to give her a direction once and she got it.“She knew exactly where she was knew she was on a theatrical stage. She knew that at seven. And she was the darling of the show. She just soared.“She had to know then and there that this was her life.”Head of Choate Rosemary Hall's theatre department, Tracy Ginder-Delventhal, taught Rebecca for two years and believes her former student is “a golden spirit who walks with humility and kindness” and is destined to be a household name.“Rebecca really is the whole package. People trust her, they want to be with her, they want to work with her.”Rebecca's manager, Jeff Berger, feels her future is “limitless”.“This is a daunting business,' says Berger, a show biz veteran who represents a star lineup of clients in New York and Los Angeles. “Just two percent of the actors in Manhattan are working. Ninety-five percent of Screen Actor's Guild members make less than $5,000 year as actors.“But Rebecca has the talent, the personality, and exactly the right attitude to make it. I dread telling some of my clients that an audition didn't go the way they wanted it to. Rebecca reacts the same way to being told she hasn't got a part to learning that she has. She takes what she can learn from the experience and moves on.”Rebecca says the most fragile tool in her triple threat repertoire is her voice. She says she's come to know it “like the alphabet” and protects it as if it was her first-born child.“You can still act and dance if you're tired or have a minor injury, but you can't sing on Broadway if your voice isn't in perfect condition.“I can tell when I have any congestion, any irritation or the hint of a cold,” she says as she races from a meeting with Berger, at a restaurant on 9th Avenue, to a session with vocal coach Jack Abrahams at his studio apartment 20 blocks north. “And even though I adore New York, it's dusty, it's dirty. In the summer, you go from air conditioning to heat all day long. It can wreck your voice.“I'd love to take some time off to rest my voice but there's so many people not working that you can't. So you push, push, push and hope nothing breaks.”Abrahams offers rehabilitation as much as instruction during his lessons with performers like Rebecca.“She's one of only a handful of actresses who can belt the high notes,” says Abrahams, who has been training Broadway performers for more than 30 years. “Amplification, and the scores for '80s musicals like 'Evita', changed things forever for female singers.“The stress of performing material that's louder and more like rock music can permanently injure an actor's vocal chords. Female singers male too have to learn to produce the sound that's needed without forcing it. Helping Rebecca do that is the most important thing I can do for her.”Rebecca shrugs off the job insecurity, the constant threat of illness or injury, and the intense competition that are typical of a career on Broadway. “What can you do? Nothing. This is what I've chosen to do, and I love it, so there's no point worrying.“I have the tools that I need to succeed,” she says as she hugs Abrahams goodbye and heads for the subway, weaving her way through the rush hour traffic. “And I love being able to affect people.“I know what it feels like to go to the theatre and have an experience that moves you. I want to do that for people. I think I'm meant to affect others to fulfill myself.”Rebecca signs in with security at Foxwoods Theatre, where 'Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark' is playing to sold-out audiences, checks the notice board and then goes to her dressing room. After the hurly burly of Manhattan's streets, the room is an oasis of silence, broken only by the gentle hiss of a humidifier and the occasional cast update on the backstage intercom.Rebecca's personal dresser, Cheryl, has made sure all is in order: her costume changes are hung neatly in the wardrobe; the harness that holds her aloft in the high-flying show drapes from a hook on the wall. Rebecca has propped the programme for the 1992 production of 'Annie' in front of her mirror. It's the first thing she sees every time she sits down to put on her makeup.“You know, you just need a base of talent and determination,” Rebecca says quietly, lining her green eyes with liner and rolling her long hair into pin curls to fit under her character's red-haired wig. “You need to be prepared to go wherever you need to go and do whatever you need to do, even though it might not work out. But you can do it.“It's hard, but you can do it. I did.”