Norah Jones jumps blindly into acting

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By Mike Collett-White

CANNES, France (Reuters) - 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 and I hadn’t a clue and just thought ... ’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," Jones said.

"I thought, ’Let’s have lunch, maybe he wants the music,’ and he said: ’Do you want to be in a movie?’.

"I said: ’OK, you’re amazing.’ I really just jumped .....continued below

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It was a risk for Wong too. He decided to cast Jones without having met her, attracted by her looks and cinematic voice.

LOVE LOST AND FOUND

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.

"The challenge of this film is it is in English, which is not my language," said Wong, the president of the jury in Cannes last year.

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. I wanted to do justice to Americans, to the characters, which I expect from other films."

Asked why he had chosen blueberry pie for the title of the film, he replied:

"At the very beginning I decided it was blueberry pie. I asked Norah also what kind of pie you hate the most, and she said blueberry pie, so it’s like a torture."