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Singer Jewel's Screen Debut Is a Gem
Pop star plays Civil War widow in 'Ride With the Devil'
Ruthe Stein, Chronicle Staff Writer
Sunday, December 5, 1999
©1999 San Francisco Chronicle
URL:
5/PK86344.DTL
Madonna, Doris Day, Bing Crosby, Barbra Streisand, Frank Sinatra and even
Bob Dylan and Fabian have tried it -- with varying success. Now it is
Jewel's turn to test whether the magic that has catapulted her to fame in
the music world translates to the silver screen.
The trick is to disappear into a character so audiences forget they are
watching a popular singer. Sinatra pulled this off some of the time;
Madonna has yet to. In "Ride With the Devil," Jewel is surprisingly
effective at turning herself into a Civil War widow who is part Scarlett
O'Hara, part Melanie Wilkes.
One reason Jewel is believable on film may be the period costumes, which
are a far cry from the low-cut T-shirts, jean jackets and leather
trousers her fans are used to seeing her wear.
Jewel, 25, studied acting in boarding school and had an inkling she'd be
able to finesse a movie role. Still, it was no sure thing.
"I definitely like a challenge, but picking such a hard dramatic role for
my first movie was like jumping into the deep end of the pool," she says,
sipping tea late one morning. "It was horrifying. Oh f--, I was worried.
It took years off my life. At the same time, I loved the perversity of
knowing there is a lot at stake and if you pull it off, it's good, and if
you don't, you're screwed."
Her speaking voice has the same lilting, honey tone heard on her
best-selling albums, "Pieces of You" and "Spirit," and on
her new
release, "Joy: A Holiday Collection." With her oval face and long,
straight blond hair, she resembles Helen Hunt, if Hunt ate three square
meals a day. Jewel has that rare ability, especially for a celebrity, of
being right there, thoughtfully answering each question with no apparent
desire to be somewhere else. Or maybe she really is a good actress.
Pushing herself to do something outside her field would have been a lot
easier if her CDs weren't all over record stores, she says. "That kind of
courage pre-fame is real easy, because if you fall on your ass, who
cares? But fame is an odd creature. It has a life of its own and an
influence on you, which is a force to be reckoned with.
"When you're famous and you fail, it's in front of the whole world. The
world does not value growth over perfection. People are very unforgiving,
and that causes self-censorship. It makes you go, 'Ooh, I've got to be
safe and stick with what I know.' I knew I might look bad, and knowing
that, I went ahead and did it because otherwise you die creatively."
Jewel had been looking to make a movie, but the timing had to be right so
it wouldn't interfere with her recording or touring schedule. Just as a
window of opportunity opened, her agents were approached by Avy Kaufman,
casting director for "Ride With the Devil."
"I'm way over 40, so I didn't know who Jewel was," says Ang Lee, the
film's director, who is best known for "Sense and Sensibility."
Kaufman
sent him Jewel's music videos as well as a tape of her playing Dorothy in
"The Wizard of Oz" as a teenager.
Meeting with Jewel, Lee made it clear she would have to take acting
lessons for three months before any casting decision was made. "I was
very frank with her. She was so devoted to the possibility of acting in
this movie, she agreed to the lessons."
This proved to be more stressful than she thought. "I was touring and
taking acting lessons in between," Jewel recalls. "I had some days
where
I went, 'I'm going to be all right' and other days where it was like 'Uh,
I can't get out of bed.' "
Lee suggested she take up tai chi as a way to relax and get into the
role. "He could see I wasn't real grounded at that time of my life. All
of a sudden I was famous and I had a stalker during that time and I was
working with this brilliant director, who really intimidated me. The tai
chi was just to get me settled."
Even with all that going on, Lee's instincts told him Jewel was up to the
role. "Her part doesn't require her to carry the movie, so I didn't think
it was such a big risk," he says.
It could be a risk with a payoff if her legion of fans, most of them
young women, rush to see her in "Ride With the Devil." The film
stars
Tobey Maguire and Skeet Ulrich, who are not hot enough yet to get people
into theaters on the strength of their names.
However, as the film's screenwriter, James Schamus, points out: "Being a
star in one area is no guarantee of ticket sales in another." He admires
Jewel for her willingness to "completely erase her rock-star personality
on the set. She worked like a maniac on this movie. You don't see people
work like that too often."
The first few weeks on the set, "Jewel was pretty raw," Ulrich says.
"She
didn't know what was going on when it came to technique. She didn't even
know what a mark was," he adds, referring to where actors are supposed to
stand.
But she caught on quickly. Ulrich thinks it helped that she seems in some
ways like her character, Sue Lee, a shy Southern woman who comes into her
own when she has to fend for herself during the grueling war years.
"Civil War widows became quite notorious by 1862-63," Schamus
explains.
"Because they were sexually aware, they realized that in order to survive
and get through the battle, they really had to go out there and attract
husbands. There was a kind of sexuality and assertiveness these women had
going after their next guy. They began to address men in public and
introduce themselves -- all things that were quite shocking at the time."
Jewel nails her character's sexuality, and there were other ways in which
she could relate to Sue Lee.
"I was raised on the land. I was raised to be feminine, but not in the
kind of contrived way where you are playing a game of seducing men," she
says.
"But I have never lost a husband; I have never slept with a man who ended
up dying right afterward."
She also never wore a corset before she had to squeeze into one for her
role. Like all self-respecting 19th century women, Sue Lee wouldn't have
gone out without one. "That was a hard part about the movie for me. The
corset was so tight, I couldn't breathe when I bent over. I wanted to
die," Jewel recalls.
Everything else about making a movie appealed to her, however, and she
would like to do it again, although writing songs and singing take
precedence.
"Music allows you to talk directly to people. No other art medium does
that. I can actually tell people what I think. I can get in front of kids
and say, 'Don't lose hope' or 'Gee, I feel like s--.' "
Next time, she would like to be in a contemporary film. But she isn't
rushing into anything.
"One of the nice things about the position I'm in is that I don't have to
be an actress," Jewel says. "I don't need the money, so I don't have
to
take parts I don't want. It's a purely creative endeavor. That's a luxury
most actors don't have. I can wait and be real picky."
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