FRANCE: As"My Blueberry Nights" prepares to open the 60th Cannes Film Festival, Norah Jones talks about her transformation from singer to actress

Singer Norah Jones took a leap of faith when she agreed to star in Chinese director Wong Kar Wai's latest movie "My Blueberry Nights". When she was approached about the part of Elizabeth in his first English-language movie, she had never seen any of Wong's films and was focussing on a tour. But once she watched his acclaimed "In The Mood For Love" Jones agreed to try her hand at acting. "I was not planning on making any kind of acting debut, and he knocked on my door out of the blue I just thought, well, I'm on tour and I'm not an actress, so, whatever," Jones told reporters after the film was screened to the press in Cannes. "My Blueberry Nights" is the opening picture at the 60th Cannes Film Festival, one of 22 movies in competition for the coveted Palme d'Or. It has its world premiere at a red carpet gala screening in the evening. "I watched "In the Mood for Love," and I thought, wow, that's just the most beautiful thing I've ever seen. And I thought, let's have lunch, maybe he wants some music. And he says: Wanna be in a movie? And I said: OK." It was a risk for Wong too. He decided to cast Jones without having met her, attracted by her looks and cinematic voice. He says his instincts proved to be spot on. During the shooting of one scene, Wong asked Jones to cry, and she reacted in true actress fashion, Wong said. "We rolled the camera and then she cried. After that I said: Well, that's really great. And she said: Do you want one more? And I said: No, this girl is going to be an actress." Jones is a Grammy-winning artist who at the age of 28 has sold tens of millions of albums. She appears alongside British heartthrob Jude Law in a story of losing and finding love set in New York and across the United States. Law plays New York cafe owner Jeremy from Manchester, England, who tells Elizabeth that her boyfriend has been cheating on her and they gradually become soul mates. Elizabeth embarks on a journey where she encounters a policeman who drowns his marital sorrows in whisky (David Strathairn), his wife (Rachel Weisz) and gambling addict (Natalie Portman). Wong said he was outside his comfort zone with the film, which critics in Cannes initially praised for its visual beauty and soundtrack more than the narrative or dialogue. Wong, the president of the jury in Cannes last year, said it was the first film he has directed in English. He said he had often found foreign directors' attempts to make films about China "very embarrassing", with characters distorted or too exotic. "I always wanted to make a film in a different language, but I wanted to avoid this problem." He said he wanted to do justice to his American characters just as he expected foreign directors to do justice to Chinese characters.

ITN Source | May 17, 2007

Tags:. .attracted. .approached. .visual. .justice. .faith