Award-winning actor Ruben Santiago-Hudson plays a wild-card character in “Gem of the Ocean,” August Wilson’s new Broadway show – but it’s still not as wild as this nice-guy actor’s real life.

The half-Puerto Rican, half-black performer grew up in an upstate New York rooming house full of drunks, fallen women and loners, run by a saint of a woman named Nanny who became his surrogate mom when his parents broke up.

“The people in the rooming house brought out the theatrical side in me, the way they behaved with everybody trying to outdo each other in conversation and gift of gab,” says Santiago-Hudson, 48, whose original ambition was to be a doctor.

“Who would have thought it would end up a career?”

He turned that upbringing into a one-man show, “Lackawanna Blues,” in which he plays 20 characters with names like Numb Finger Pete and Ol’ Po’ Carl. It was a labor of love, and it’s recently been made into a movie for HBO.

But while success follows Santiago-Hudson regularly now – he won a Tony for another Wilson play, “Seven Guitars,” and has appeared in dozens of movies, TV shows and plays – it wasn’t always that way.

In the beginning, he was frozen out of black roles because of his Puerto Rican side and shunned for Latino roles because of his African American side.

“You find yourself like a man without a country. I thought it would be a miracle if I ever got on Broadway,” he says.

“My whole persona leans more towards the African American culture because that’s where I was raised and I don’t speak Spanish, but my Puerto Rican heritage is very important to me, too.”

Originally calling himself Ruben Santiago, he added Hudson to subtly remind producers of his versatility.

His character in “Gem,” now in previews, is a meaty one.

Set in 1904 Pittsburgh, “Gem” focuses on the earthy Aunt Ester, a powerful, opinionated community elder who is visited by a young drifter seeking advice to begin a better life.

Ester’s world is turned topsy-turvy when the local lawman named Caesar, played by Santiago-Hudson, uses his “justice by the book” mentality in tragic ways. While he’s surrounded by scene-stealers like Phylicia Rashad and Lisa Gay Hamilton, every moment Santiago-Hudson is on stage, he rules it.

Still, he does temper his love of live acting with a little pragmatism.

“There’s a magic to Broadway, there’s no place like it in the world,” he says. “But also that yellow slip can come up on the wall and you can be out in two weeks.”

“Gem of the Ocean” opens Dec. 6 at the Walter Kerr Theatre, 219 W. 48th St., just west of Broadway.