Fashion & Beauty

Taking flight

It’s hard to believe looking at her now, but high school was an awkward place for Yaya Dacosta — before drama class, that is. Growing up in Harlem, the 27-year-old actress says the drama elective “made school” in junior high. “That same [drama] teacher sent me on my first audition.”

After majoring in African studies at Brown, and taking a brief detour in modeling (she was runner-up on “America’s Next Top Model” in Season 3), Dacosta has been honing her craft, popping up all over film and TV. She had a 44-episode stint on “All My Children” in 2008, played a high schooler learning ballroom dancing in “Take the Lead” with Antonio Banderas and last year played Wilhelmina Slater’s daughter Nico on “Ugly Betty,” among other turns.

PHOTOS: YAYA DACOSTA’S FEATHERY FROCKS

But the born-and-bred New Yorker has moved to a new level with her breakout: the supporting role as Mark Ruffalo’s girlfriend in sleeper hit “The Kids Are All Right.” She plays, according to Dacosta, “less of a girl, more of woman, a free spirit, comfortable with her self and her sexuality.”

With Dacosta flying high (she appears on the September cover of W, and her next role is in the sci-fi flick “Tron: Legacy,” out in December), fall’s fancy feathers seemed an apt trend for her to model.

“I’m a better actor now,” she jokes. “I can act like a model.”