Les Miz days: Eden rehearsing with Richard Jay Alexander

Eden at 1995 Kids With Heart benefit

Eden and her brother, Sam

Eden Riegel became a "Broadway Kid" at age 7 when she debuted as the Young Cosette in Les Miserables. She appeared on Broadway in The Will Rogers Follies and off Broadway in The Tide, Lost and Found, the Manhattan Theatre Club's Nine Armenians and starred in the pre-Broadway production of the musical Jane Eyre.

Eden plays the recurring role of Meghan Cooper on FOX's New York Undercover, and had roles on TV's As the World Turns, Guiding Light, Nickelodeon's Big Help, Saturday Night Live, Conan O'Brian and Late Night with David Letterman. You may recognize her as the voice of cartoon characters for Lucky Charms, Count Chocula, Trix, Honey Nut Cheerios and many other commercials and jingles.

Eden will be the voice of Miriam in the upcoming DreamWorks animated musical Prince of Egypt. Other movie credits include HBO's Smoke Alarm, The Frog King at Sundance Film Festival and Duo at the Chicago International Film Festival. She sings on the soundtrack of Home Alone 2 and The Crossing Guard starring Jack Nicholson. She was a backup vocalist for Michael Jackson's History and soloed on Songs of Virtue for Peter Pan Records and the theme song and records of Sesame Street.

Eden Riegel - Young Cosette in Les Misérables

Eden Riegel, who has been with the Broadway company of Les Misérables since the fall of 1989, is a child star from a somewhat different solar system. Before her Broadway debut this perpetually smiling and cheery little girl was in a 26-city road company of the musical along with her brother Sam, who played Gavroche. They hail from Arlington, Virginia, where their father still lives, but New York and the bright lights of Broadway are where Eden and Sam and their mother Lenore seem to feel most at home. The kids’ dad visits nearly every weekend; he misses his wife and children, but he has learned to make allowances for the busy and unconventional childhood they’ve chosen.

Singing and dancing and performing aren’t just a way of life for Eden Riegel - they are her life. She blows kisses hello and kisses farewell. Eden and her brother are enrolled in the Professional Children’s School for, as Eden puts it, “children in the business.” She prefers her tutor on the road and this to her regular old school in Virginia because her fellow students at PCS “understand what it’s like to be an actress.” Whisper-thin and already exotically pretty, Eden on Broadway is just where she and her mother want her to be.

At the age of five Eden was already sure she wanted to be an actress. With Lenore’s guidance and blessings she did regional shows near home and then graduated to dinner theatres before being selected to join the touring cast of Les Misérables - all at the ripe old age of seven and a half. With their grandmother acting as a guardian Eden and Sam went off across the country to perform in front of sold-out audiences. Although she was originally scheduled to tour only for three months, Eden found the traveling road show so exhilarating that her contract was extended to a year. Then the Broadway offer, so mother and kids hotfooted it into the big city and an apartment on the Upper West Side.

Lenore Riegel manages her daughter’s astonishingly busy schedule with the magic of Houdini, the energy of Hercules and the skill of a logician. There are the music and dance and voice lessons, not to mention school and studio recordings and countless auditions. All these activities have to take place around Eden’s steady job, which has her onstage six times a week. In the British tradition with young performers, Eden, as well as Daisy Eagan, alternates her role with other young performers, but she must still show up for every performance lest an understudy is needed. This all adds up to as many as 25 or 30 car trips a day, which Eden doesn’t seem to mind one bit. She’s her mother in miniature: ambitious, ebullient and positively stagestruck.

“I love everything about acting,” Eden pronounces in her high, sweet-timbred child’s voice. “Everything! I have very many responsibilities, and I’m respected like someone older, which is an honor. I’m not just some kid who carries groceries home for my mother. That’s such a normal life.” And Eden doesn’t miss the free time that most children enjoy. “Going home and having all the time on earth would be boring."

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