Aguilera making feature film debut in 'Burlesque

LOS ANGELES

Christina Aguilera sits back comfortably on the sofa, her head on one hand, her legs curled up on the cushions. Beside her quietly rests her dog, a brown and white papillon.

"He’s family -- a mama’s boy," the superstar singer assures me.

"Stinky," she giggles when asked his name.

Aguilera’s pose reminds you of Elizabeth Taylor in "Cleopatra," real old-time Hollywood glamour. All you’d need for the setting would be famed studio photographer George Hurrell to capture her image.

Now, after years of resisting it, the diva is making her feature film debut in the musical "Burlesque," starring opposite Cher, a musical icon and an Oscar-winning actress.

"I was just waiting for the right project to feel really passionate about," says Aguilera, who turns 30 in December. "I just didn’t want to be that music-to-movies artist who just had to do it to do it."

Burlesque -- the art form -- has always intrigued her, and Aguilera says she has a number of books on the subject. So she was surprised when writer-director Steve Antin sent her the script, and it was set in Hollywood today.

That intrigued her even more.

The basic story, though, seems drawn from a 1930s screenplay, albeit with some sexy new twists. Aguilera plays Ali Rose, a small-town Iowa girl with a big voice (naturally, in the singer’s case)

and big dreams. So she heads to Los Angeles, where she happens upon a burlesque lounge and immediately sets out to become one of the girls, who are ruled by the club’s glamorous owner, Tess (Cher). There is, of course, rivalry with another dancer, Ricki (Kristen Bell), and love is in the air, with a bartender (Cam Gigandet) and a charismatic entrepreneur (Eric Dane) vying for her attention.

The reportedly $55 million film was mostly shot on a soundstage on the Sony lot in Culver City on a set that was created to give the feeling of an actual club and its dressing rooms. Once she signed up, Aguilera became heavily involved in the project, from developing her character to choosing costumes to writing songs -- she’s listed as musical supervisor -- and performing the musical numbers.

Aguilera says after she met with Antin, she saw that the director had an appreciation of women’s beauty: "I knew he had a very classy, beautiful vision for the film."

This jibes with the singer’s own passion for old Tinseltown. She lists "All About Eve" with Bette Davis, "Meet Me in St. Louis" with Judy Garland, Marlene Dietrich in "Blonde Venus" and "a lot of Marilyn movies -- I absolutely love her movies" -- as among her favorites. In one scene, the girls in the club even dance and lip-synch to the classic Monroe and Jane Russell number "Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend."

"I love old Hollywood glamour and the screen sirens, the way things were shot back then through those star filters," she says.

And in "Burlesque," Aguilera has more than one of those moments. The highlight is when she sings the ballad "Bound to You" in a long green dress and is photographed lovingly by Antin.

Co-star Gigandet says hearing that song -- the singer had recorded all of her numbers before shooting -- was one of the reasons he decided to do the film: "Her voice is so mesmerizing. I can’t believe it’s coming from her."

Aguilera wrote two other songs for the film -- "Express" and the title number, "Burlesque" -- and had a hand in choosing much of the other music, including "A Guy What Takes His Time," which Mae West made famous, and "I’m a Good Girl," written by Jacques Morali and Henri Belolo ("YMCA") and popularized at the Crazy Horse Paris burlesque revue. One of the other attractions of the film was that Aguilera was also able to perform a song by her idol, Etta James; "She’s my favorite singer ever," Aguilera notes. The film even goes out of its way to give a nod to the great blues and soul singer.

Though she’s been in the spotlight for more than a decade, Aguilera says making the transition to the big screen was tough for her: "I’m used to music videos, but doing a movie musical, that’s a whole different animal."

Aguilera’s acting experience has been pretty much limited to her days on "The Mickey Mouse Club" as a kid and hosting "Saturday Night Live." She says both Antin and the film’s producer, Clint Culpepper, weren’t anxious for her to take acting lessons before shooting because they preferred her to "stay fresh and organic."

"But I actually met with a couple of people anyway because I felt that if I’m really going to do this Š I wanted all the info I could possibly get."

She also avoided watching herself in dailies. "I wanted to stay focused on the work and not get caught up in anybody’s reactions or start to get on myself. I’m an extreme perfectionist. I just wanted to focus on being Ali and not be swayed."

Gigandet says it was fun watching Aguilera progress.

"The first time I met Christina she was just so open, and she understood that she has never acted before," says Gigandet, who portrayed a bad vampire in "Twilight" and is in the upcoming "Priest." "The fact that she was so open to learning was a dream Š .

"It was just such an experience watching her figure out something for the first time. A light bulb would go off even in the middle of the scene, and she would just change. Her mind was always moving."

The singer even found performing the music was different.

"I had no mike. It wasn’t like a live performing-type situation where I concentrate on vocals first, dancing second. Here, we recorded the vocals first and then solely, wholeheartedly concentrated on the dancing."

And those bumps and grinds did turn black and blue sometimes.

"I had so many bruises every day, especially when I was whipping that long strand of diamonds around for ‘Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend,’ " she says. "I bruise easily, but I looked like I got in a car accident on some of the days after rehearsals."

The music she wrote for "Burlesque" will remind Aguilera fans more of her grittier 2006 acclaimed best-selling album "Back to Basics" than "Bionic," a mixture of pop and dance music that was released earlier this year to disappointing sales.

The singer dismisses the setback -- "I was really proud of that record" -- pointing to promotion issues and the fact that she interrupted making the album to shoot the movie.

Aguilera also filed for divorce last month from her husband of five years, music marketing executive Jordan Bratman. The couple have a nearly 3-year-old son, Max.

"The most important thing is that my son is happy and he always will be. He’s surrounded by love," was all that the diva would offer on the subject.

And while she is looking forward to incorporating some of the "Burlesque" numbers in her next tour, Aguilera says she’s not rushing into anything and will start looking at other film projects after she’s done promoting "Burlesque."

"I’m in a very introspective place in my life right now," she says, as Stinky sits peacefully by her.

"A lot of new changes are on the way. I’m just really excited about what this next chapter of my life has in store for me."