A New Yorker role that’s maid to order

“Maid in Manhattan” is a holiday trifle, a standard Cinderella story made in New York in a New York minute that shot off the starting blocks like a New York sprinter (No. 1 in its first week after opening Dec. 13, with $18.7 million in sales). It’s a nice little vehicle for Jennifer Lopez, with Ralph Fiennes as her Prince Charming and a supporting cast that includes Natasha Richardson, Stanley Tucci and Bob Hoskins.

And who plays J. Lo’s best friend, the hotel maid who pushes her to apply for management, who gets her to try on Richardson’s fancy clothes, who prompts her to go out with Fiennes, who nags and insists and makes her fulfill her dream? Who, in fact, is the only major character who seems to revel in being a New Yorker, not some deracinated star who could have come from anywhere (although Lopez does use a trace of her own local Latino lilt)? Marissa Matrone.

Who?

Marissa Matrone, 30, raised on Long Island, who learned the hotel business from the inside during the many summers her family spent at the Nevele Grand Resort in the Catskills, where her father, Joseph, now a retired school administrator, ran the day camp. Her name is in the credits somewhere, but it’s outweighed by the other actors, some of whom do a good bit less on screen but who have much heftier resumes.

This is, after all, Matrone’s first movie. She auditioned on Valentine’s Day, got the part a month later and finished doing some re-shooting in September. It comes on the heels of her first Broadway roles -- a year and a half in “Sideman” as Patsy, the gutsy Bronx barmaid to Edie Falco’s Terry, and eventually succeeding Falco when that Long Island actress left to shoot “The Sopranos.” (Matrone also has been on “The Sopranos,” among several other minor television appearances.) And that was her first professional role since earning her MFA from the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University in 1998.

Matrone’s rise has not exactly been meteoric -- she wasn’t discovered somewhere as a teenager. Nor has she gotten her start because her parents were stars before her. But her progress has been steady, since the days as a 3- and 4-year-old who loved to dress up and run around the neighborhood, who got a kick out of putting on little plays with her little friends and who loved to grab the mike at weddings.

Matrone was always involved in acting, although for most of her school life, that competed with her love of athletics: soccer, softball, diving. She finally made the decision to pursue the stage when she enrolled at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, which has a major theater program.

“As a woman, I realized there was no future in [athletics] for me,” she said over sausage and eggs at a coffee shop around the corner from her Bank Street apartment in the West Village.

But all that athleticism, that emphasis on the physical, appears to have stood her in good stead. Seen in person, what connects Matrone with movie maid Stephanie Kehoe are the triangular face and almond eyes. Otherwise, this upright, petite, shapely young woman with brown hair flowing below her shoulders bears no resemblance to the thick-waisted, slouching, hard-bitten worker who clearly has seen some of the dark corners of the world.

Standing outside in a chilly playground nearby, she scrunched down to show the difference in posture and carriage. “I was heavier,” Matrone said. “I wore an unflattering bra, I took the sweat pads out of the dress.” Essentially, “I wanted to be the Ethel to [Lopez’s] Lucy.”

What was it like to work with the moment’s hottest celebrity? “At first, I found myself staring at her. She is so beautiful; she has an intense presence. It was intimidating. But she’s like a New York girl. We connected. We have a similar sense of humor.”

All right then. A successful Broadway introduction, a successful movie debut, a few minor television appearances -- where does life go from here?

“I’ve gone on some auditions,” Matrone said. “People are calling. I’m reading some scripts. People say, ‘Yeah, we know her.’ ” But Hollywood shuts down for the holidays, so she doesn’t expect any real movement until next month. One thing, though: “I don’t want to be typecast as a New Yorker. I can be British, I can be Spanish.” (In college, she was the only white person in an otherwise all-black production of Shakespeare’s “Richard III.” “At the [movie] premiere, I looked very feminine and classy. People didn’t recognize me at first.”

Indications are, from now on, that won’t be much of a problem.

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Peter Goodman is a reporter for Newsday, a Tribune company.