Mob Hit Gal's Big Break

[Brian Damage]

The newest "Soprano" is a regular Bronx girl who's made it good.

Cara Buono, who plays the mob wife of made man Christopher Moltisanti (Michael Imperioli), was originally just supposed to be a guest star last spring. But in the fall, she was asked to join the HBO hit for its final episodes, she says.

"It's hard to put it into words," said Buono. "Every day I was there, I would have to say to myself that I was part of a show that I have so much respect for and love as an audience member - it was amazing and I feel really lucky.

"Everything you hear about the people on that show is true," she said. "They're really warm and it's just the best job that I've ever had."

Buono, 33, says that the cast may have felt a "sense of denial" that this season would be the show's last and compared the experience to graduating from school.

"Everyone on the show was there much longer, so it was probably a much different experience for them, as sad as I am about it ending," she said.

The final episodes begin airing April 8.

Buono plays Kelli, a girl whom Christopher got pregnant. When she broke the news to him, the volatile Chris immediately proposed.

His longtime girlfriend, Adriana (Drea de Matteo) was famously whacked at the end of the fifth season after admitting to Christopher - Tony Soprano's cousin and a capo in his crew - that she was working as a mole for the FBI.

Buono won't say much more about what happens heading into the series' final episodes. "I'm sworn to secrecy," she says. "There's certain stuff you just don't talk about and I don't want anything to slip out."

Buono is the youngest of four kids and grew up in the Morris Park section of The Bronx where her parents still live in the same house. She says landing a regular gig on "The Sopranos" is an honor after years hustling as an actor in New York.

But while other struggling actors tend to work as waiters to pay the bills, Buono was appearing off-Broadway, and paid her own way through Columbia University, eventually snaring a double-major bachelor's degree in just three years in English and political science.

Buono says she started acting when she was 11, reading industry trade magazines. She saw an ad for a casting call, sneaked into the auditions and landed a role in Harvey Fierstein's play "Spook House," despite her lack of experience.

The result is a résumé of semiregular TV roles as long as her legs that include appearances on "Law & Order," "CSI" and "Third Watch."

She was also the love interest in last year's comedy "Beer League," which starred Howard Stern sidekick Artie Lange, and she wrote and directed the 1997 independent film "Baggage," starring Liev Schreiber and Minnie Driver.