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HYPE: Mya Though her non-singing voice is so willowy you strain to hear it, 22-year-old Mya (last name: Harrison) is nothing if not the quintessential pop star. Since first making a splash as the airy, trilling ballast that kept the testosterone-laden hit single "Ghetto Superstar" afloat in 1998, she's released two albums, appeared opposite LL Cool J in In Too Deep and hit it really big as one-fourth of the lingerie-wearing quartet (along with Pink, Christina Aguilera and Lil' Kim) that steamed up MTV with their cover of "Lady Marmalade" for the Moulin Rouge soundtrack. Now, in addition to putting out a new album (the upcoming Smoke and Mirrors), Mya will soon be seen in her biggest film role to date as a slatternly prison inmate opposite Catherine Zeta-Jones and Renee Zellweger in this winter's big-screen version of the Broadway musical Chicago. Mya knocks aside the inevitable comparisons to that other high-profile, Oscar-baiting musical ("It's a much darker film than Moulin Rouge," she says) and describes her time on the set in loving terms. "I actually got to be next to Richard Gere and Catherine Zeta-Jones dancing and singing," Mya says. "My favorite memory is when director Rob Marshall told all the girls that we could have as much dessert as we wanted. Our costumes are very, very revealing, but it's set in the burlesque period--what was considered sexy back then was very plump women, so we were told to gain 10 pounds. It's usually the other way around. [Laughing] I really felt good about that." |
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But unlike many headline-grabbing actresses, Jolie is even more interesting on-screen than off. The dangerously screwed-up beauties she has played in George Wallace, Gia, Playing by Heart, Pushing Tin and Girl, Interrupted have all been tangible, believable creations. In her first big-budget thriller, The Bone Collector, she easily matched the skill and intensity of Denzel Washington. She's likely to stun audiences as the take-no-prisoners action heroine Lara Croft in Tomb Raider, a fantasy adventure adap from the video game by director Simon West (see story on p. 54). And who isn't looking forward to watching her later this summer when she plays the sex-obsessed femme fatale who enraptures Antonio Banderas in Original Sin? When Angelina Jolie greets me for this interview, she strikes me as someone fully capable of doing all that she has done offscreen and all that she's expected to do on-screen as Lara Croft. She's dressed in a black T-shirt and black leather jacket, and she looks like she might throw a mean right if provoked. "Call me Angie," she says, reaching out to shake my hand. I can tell she is indeed something like her father--intense, focused. And I have little doubt that, like her father, she'll be original in her thinking. For Lawrence Grobel's interview pick up the June issus of Movieline. PAGE 1 | 2 |