Lymari Nadal

VANITIES

All Is VANITIES... Nothing Is Fair

AGE: 29. PROVENANCE: Ponce, Puerto Rico. BREAKING THROUGH AS... Denzel Washington's moll in American Gangster, Ridley Scott's upcoming epic about a 1970s `Harlem drug lord. Her very hrst day on set, Nadal himed her wedding scene with Washington. "Denzel and I had met before, thank God," she says, "because you know you cannot get married without knowing the guy." SMOLDERING. LONG-LIMBED. AND EQUIPPED WITH... a master's degree in chemistry from the University of Puerto Rico. "I do once in a while dream I'm in a bigL~ company or teaching university, which was one of tl~.. ti~ings I really wanted to do and I did as a teacher's `assistant during grad school," says Nadal. "But I'm so fascinated by theater that I've found I'm O.K." AND IF THAT DOESNT MAKE CHEMISTRY SEXY FOR YOU, CONSIDER ... that Nadal actually sold to ABC her idea for a TV series about "three kids that went to Harvard Graduate School for chemistry, and they were only 14, 15 years old. I was in grad school with a kid like that and SP' MV it fascinated me." The project has languished in development hell but may yet be revived.

CONTINUED on page 274

FOR DETAILS, SEE CREDITS PAGE

CONTINUED from page 271

NO VAN WILDER-TYPE FUCKS FOR THIS ONE, THEN: Nadal is now developing a film about the Puerto Rican nationalist Lolita Lebron, who spent 25 years in jail after participating in an armed attack on the U.S. House of Representatives in 1954. (Lebron was later pardoned by President Jimmy Carter.) "She's a very exciting person, and for 50 years people have wanted to get the legal rights to tell her story," Nadal says. "I've got a wonderful producer-director from Puerto Rico, and we sat with [Lebron] for four hours in her living room, and she agreed, and signed."

KRISTA SMITH