Super Mario: from Sex and the City to turn-of-the-century city, Mario Cantone takes his sassy self onstage in The Violet Hour.

Best known as Charlotte's wisecracking stylist friend Anthony on Sex and the City, Mario Cantone is now playing a wisecracking publishing assistant in Richard Greenberg's new play, The Violet Hour, currently running on Broadway. Both characters are high-strung, frenetic, and laugh-out-loud funny--just like Cantone. It comes as no surprise, then, that both roles were written for the actor-comedian.

"I only get parts that are written for me," the 43-year-old New Yorker says. I'm a terrible auditioner."

That's not entirely true, since his breakthrough role was on Broadway in Love! Valour! Compassion! (replacing Nathan Lane, for whom the play was written). Cantone has also done Shakespeare in the Park and assorted off-Broadway plays, performed his comedy show everywhere from Caroline's to Carnegie Hall, and joked with pal Joy Behar, post-awards shows, on The View. "I was the first and last male co-host," he points out.

Early in his career, Cantone got noticed on the New York area kids' TV show Steampipe Alley, which had enough adult tumor to keep parents--and others without kids--laughing. "We did 'the Mommie Dearest obstacle course' and 'let's find Sammy Davis's eye in the pie.' We got away with murder," he remembers. "Then [boating company] Chris-Craft bought WWOR, and they were like, 'This has to go.'"

The cult success of Steampipe Alley may explain why audiences at Cantone's stand-up shows are more straight than gay. Fortunately, they have no problem with the occasionally campy material: "I have straight guys saying [in a butch voice] 'Do Judy Garland!' 'Do Liza Minnelli!' I love that."

Cantone was supposed to have a one-man show on Broadway last spring, but it was postponed due to financing delays. He now hopes to do it next fall. In the meantime, he's busy with The Violet Hour--out playwright Richard Greenberg's follow-up to his award-winning baseball drama Take Me Out.

Following that, Cantone will appear in the long-awaited Broadway revival of Stephen Sondheim's Assassins in the role of Samuel Byck, who plotted to fly a plane into the Nixon White House. He'll shoot his final episodes of Sex and the City, airing in January, during the day while doing The Violet Hour at night.

And how close is his bitchy Sex character to the openly gay Cantone, who lives in New York's Chelsea neighborhood with his boyfriend of 12 years? "Some of him is based on me," he says. "I don't think I'm that mean, though."

His witty, excitable Violet Hour character, Gidger--who provides a foil for the driven young publisher played by Robert Sean Leonard--is probably gay too. But since the play is set in 1919, Cantone says he's "on the down low."

The Boston native's next gay role may be on his own network sitcom: He's in talks with Universal Television for a show that would have him as gay and straight twins. But since the networks prefer sitcoms filmed with live audiences, Universal wants to change the concept and find an actor to play his brother.

"Should I sell myself to the devil and just do this, or what?" Cantone asks, wondering. "I'm happy doing theater and being poor, I really am."