• May 10, 1999
• Vol. 51
• No. 17

Taye Diggs: Actor

• 

From PEOPLE Magazine

How did Stella get her groove back? Try just one way. It rhymes with Taye, as in Taye Diggs, the 28-year-old actor who reawakened a lonely Angela Bassett in the 1998 film. "Taye is truly eye candy—luscious to behold," says Fredi Walker, Diggs's costar in his previous gig, Broadway's Rent, where he played the villainous landlord Benny. "I'm adding that movie to my collection just for his shower scene!" Walker was around in 1996 when an elated Diggs ran naked through the empty Nederlander Theatre to celebrate his casting in How Stella Got Her Groove Back and reports, "He is sculpted to perfection." In fact, another actress found Diggs's form so distracting that she had to be edited out of his latest film, Go. "She was supposed to be speaking to someone else in a scene, but her eyes kept veering to Taye," says the movie's producer, Paul Rosenberg. "He has this strength and magnetism that makes it hard not to focus on him."

Once a bespectacled beanpole labeled "beady-eyed" by his junior high school classmates in Rochester, N.Y., Diggs wasn't always the center of attention. "I had a complex," he confesses. "I didn't think I was handsome, and I wished people thought I was." Modern-dance classes and weight lifting helped the 5'9" actor muscle up. Now he works out two or three times a week ("Your basic weights-and-cardio routine," he says), eats a lot of chicken, and smears on sandalwood oil to lubricate his skin, which Walker describes as "the quality of polished wood." But Diggs puts in limited face time at the mirror, trimming nose hairs ("I attack those things") and checking out the way his clothes fit ("If my pants are too high or my shirt is too tight, I'll change"). His fans, on the other hand, can't seem to stop gawking. "A few weeks ago, I swear someone pinched my butt in the mall!" he says. "Pretty bold."