Most actresses cast as Laura in "The Glass Menagerie" must learn to limp in order to convince audiences of their role in the classic Tennessee Williams drama.

But not Maddi Ruhl. Her limp is genuine, thanks to a hit-and-run driver who plowed into the actress as she crossed Kamehameha Highway halfway through rehearsals.

Ruhl was lucky. No bones were broken when a driver hit her in a crosswalk fronting Hawai'i Pacific University's Kane'ohe campus, but the freshman will bring her own insight — and Advil — to the school's spring production. Friends say she is taking method acting too seriously.

"I am usually in some level of pain throughout the day," she said. "I don't know much about medical lingo, but most of the soft tissue in my foot was damaged or destroyed."

The car's impact late on the evening of Feb. 24 sent Ruhl flying. The 19-year-old from Chicago only had a moment of warning when she saw the headlights. The vehicle hit her so hard that it broke binders in her backpack.

"The most disorienting thing was the bang it made when it hit me," she said. "I think he was going 60 mph. He pretty much was gone by the time I hit the ground."

The accident gave Ruhl new insight into her character. In "The Glass Menagerie," Laura is a painfully shy and nervous young woman with a slight physical deformity — a limp — that she has allowed to affect her entire personality. Laura is so sensitive that she believes everyone notices her limp. Emotionally stunted, she lives in a world of old phonograph records and a collection of glass animals.

"My director and I were trying to find more depth in the character and I think it was easier for me to find her strength after the accident," Ruhl said. "We found something in Laura we hadn't found before. It makes her seem more mature. She has a calmer presence to her now. She seems much older."

But for all her strength on stage, Ruhl has become a different person offstage.

While riding in a car with her mother, who flew to Hawai'i to care for her, Ruhl would "freak out a bit" when a driver would cut in front of them. She's also bothered by nightmares of faceless people.

"I am not like that normally, so I panicked when I found I was more jumpy than I am usually," she said.

Ruhl's doctors tell her she will make a full recovery and that she will be back on her feet in about a month. Until recently, she wore a heavy plastic boot to stabilize her foot, but when the curtain rises on Laura, Ruhl will rely on a tightly wrapped bandage.

Police have no idea who hit her. No one even saw the vehicle. Ruhl, who said she is more grateful to be alive than she is vengeful, suspects the driver was drunk.

"I doubt the person who hit me even remembers they hit me," she said. "I have trouble believing that a sober person would hit a human being and not slow down. But if you are inebriated enough, you might panic. If he had looked in the rearview mirror, for all he knew, I was dead."