"I was just the right age when [the Disney movie] 'Beauty and the Beast' came out," said Mandy Bruno, currently of TV's "Guiding Light" and starring in the Pittsburgh CLO production opening Tuesday.

Mandy Bruno and Brad Little rehearse their roles in "Beauty and the Beast" last week. Click photo for larger image. Preview: "Disney's Beauty and the Beast" Where: Pittsburgh CLO at Benedum Center, Downtown. When: Tuesday through June 18; Tues.-Fri. 8 p.m.; Sat. 2 and 8 p.m.; Sun. 2 p.m.; also 1 p.m. June 8. Tickets: $16.50-$46.50; half-price in second tier for ages 3-14; 412-456-6666 or www.pittsburghCLO.org

"She was my princess. I must have dragged my parents to see it 12 times," said the 24-year-old, her voice filled with fresh fondness at the recollection, although the movie was released 15 years ago. Years later she made a point of seeing the stage show when it first toured through her native state of Oregon.

"I just fell in love with it. It was my dream to wear that yellow dress."

Now she can.

The CLO role marks a return to Bruno's artistic roots, as she has worked in musical theater since she was 6, in an adaptation of "The Night Before Christmas" in her birth state of Arizona.

Then she earned a BFA in theater, concentrating in dance, at Ohio's Otterbein College, and headed off to New York, where she got her first big break -- as a soap opera actress.

"I was sure I was going to do musical theater. I came to New York to audition with a musical theater showcase and landed a soap opera."

Bruno' landed the role of Marina Cooper, joining the cast of CBS's record-running torrid chronicle of the Cooper and Spaulding clans in 2004, and she received her first Emmy nomination this year. She said she looks at the switch from stage to television and back as more stimulating than stressful, since so much of her education and experience was in music and dance, and her television family has been so supportive of her reaching back into the realm of the musical.

"I actually went straight to my executive producer and said, 'You know I love everything here and you guys, but an incredible opportunity, one that I've spent years preparing for, just came up and I'd love to be able to take it.'"

The powers said yes, the soap writers got to work on the specifics of Marina's departure ("[she's] going away ... and there's a surprise reason -- other than me playing Belle," she said), and Bruno is now preparing for "Beauty and the Beast's" 12-day run.

She looks forward to returning to Pittsburgh, where it happens she spent some college breaks.

"It was a lot closer to Ohio than Oregon," she said, laughing over the phone from the New York set of her soap opera.

In the face of such early success -- she was actually cast as Marina a few weeks before her college graduation -- Pittsburgh's Belle is thoughtful and thankful.

"It's so incredible, a lot of people dream of this for a long time, and some people come here and do it and some people don't. I just feel so fortunate and so blessed, I definitely pinch myself every day."