Tony winner Sutton Foster snags nomination for star turn in Violet

New York City (WABC) -- NEW YORK (WABC) -- Sutton Foster won a Tony Award as "Thoroughly Modern Millie" and the show made her a star a decade ago. Her second Tony came for "Anything Goes" and now she's nominated again for her current role as "Violet," a woman looking for a better life on a bus trip half a century ago.

To be torn between these 2 men was a potentially dangerous place to be down south in the 1960's, but the story of 'violet' is a lot bigger than any romance.

"It's just a really important story, a timeless story," Foster said.

Her childhood was punctuated by tragedy: the death of her mother, And then an accident in her own backyard leaves her face scarred.

"Violet is obsessed with the way she looks, and she truly believes that if she's beautiful then this will take away all the pain," Foster said.

We watch as she travels from her home in North Carolina to Tulsa, Oklahoma in search of an evangelist that violet hopes will heal her.

"And, as she goes along the journey, the musical style changes so you start off with more of the country mountain folk and then it transforms," she explained

To the blues, and then gospel.

"It's music that gets under your skin and in your bones. It's awesome," Foster said.

It's music that amplifies a universal story.

"We have physical scars, emotional scars, and it's sort of how we deal with them: how we let them rule our lives how we learn to let them go, how we learn to be healed, how we find love and forgiveness," she said.

"Violet" is a show about moving forward so it's appropriate the most familiar song is called "On My Way." The musical first performed in 1997 earned a Tony nomination for Best Revival.