NEW YORK -- Rapper 50 Cent says it was both therapeutic and a challenge to take on his first acting role in the new movie Get Rich Or Die Tryin'.

After all, he was playing himself.

The gritty, raw, urban crime drama -- directed by Irish filmmaker Jim Sheridan (My Left Foot, In The Name Of The Father, In America) -- is based on 50 Cent's amazing real-life story.

"It was therapeutic for me to be in some of those spaces over and over again," 50 Cent told reporters ahead of Get Rich's release this Wednesday.

"Some people think that because you're making a film that's based on your life, you're not actually acting. But I've still got to deliver the dialogue like everybody else in the scene, and my physical response to what they're saying has to match what's going on. (But) I do have an advantage in being able to make reference to how I was feeling at that time."

Get Rich Or Die Tryin', which takes its name from 50 Cent's 2003 multi-platinum breakthrough debut album, is a heightened take on the rapper's poverty-ridden, violent life in Queens, N.Y.

Born Curtis Jackson, he was raised fatherless by his drug-dealing mother. When his mom was murdered by suspected drug rivals when he was 8, he moved in with his grandparents. Only two years later he became a drug dealer himself, selling crack on the streets while dabbling with rap music on the side. In his teens he became powerful in the neighbourhood drug trade and served time in prison. Eventually, he had a son, Marquise (now 9 and going by the name 25 Cent).

The crossroads moment in 50 Cent's life occurred in 2000, when he very nearly died tryin' to get rich the wrong way. One day he was shot nine times in front of his grandmother's home in Queen's. His vital signs were absent but he was revived. And he survived. A bullet-wound scar on the left side of his face is still visible.

The incident turned his life around. He decided to clean himself up, leave drug dealing behind and dedicate himself to making rap music full time as 50 Cent. Eminem heard a bootleg CD of his work in 2002 and loved it so much he signed him to his Shady Records label. A year later, 50 Cent's first CD, Get Rich Or Die Tryin', sold a record 872,000 copies in the U.S. in its debut week.

The movie -- which was filmed in Toronto this past winter -- recreates 50 Cent's life-changing shooting incident perhaps a bit too closely.

"One of the worst points for me (during shooting) was the operating-table scene," the 30-year-old says. "I spent eight hours that day and it's only, like, a minute in the film. I had prosthetics and makeup on me so I couldn't move, and I'm sitting on the table and I'm looking up at the lights ... in the operating room. I got actors over me delivering dialogue doing a great job, acting as surgeons. And when they say 'Cut,' everybody's laughing and doing what they're doing, but I can't move off the table.

"And it's like, I've been in that position before (for real) -- it's just that I wasn't conscious. I was under anesthesia at that point. So now I have a reference in my head as to what happened after I was shot and unconscious."

Director Sheridan, a long-time rap fan, was attracted to 50 Cent's story of survival.

"I had that feeling the minute I met him that I could do a movie about somebody coming back from the dead," Sheridan says. "One of the times when I was getting a little hyperbolic and melodramatic, I wrote down, 'A black-gangster Jesus with the wounds to prove it.' "

Sheridan compares 50 Cent favourably to a legendary African-American icon.

"He had a Muhammad Ali-kind of self confidence," Sheridan says of the film shoot. "There's something in that culture, that if you're very confident, very expressive, you must be close to death. Because for hundreds of years, you weren't allowed to be like that. So when you repress people, and they can't express their natural soul, and you keep them back and push them down, down, down -- you're going to get the diamonds that come up. And 50's one of them. He's like Muhammad Ali."

Co-star Terrence Howard says he looks at 50 Cent as a man with two distinct personas. And his admiration for him runs deep.

"You gotta remember I never met 50 Cent (before filming)," Howard says. "I met Curtis Jackson. 50 Cent is the Mr. Hyde. I spent time with the genius, Dr. Jekyll. I thought I was going to meet a bullet-proof vest. I thought he was going to be this monster.

"And then I met this guy. I met Curtis Jackson, a man who went on a 14-day fast while we were shooting because he wanted to clear his thinking. I met a man that didn't curse, that didn't drink, and didn't smoke. I met somebody that I admired, not someone that I feared. I don't think I'll be the same person that I was before I met him. You understand why he's worth half-a-billion dollars now."

Screenwriter Terence Winter (The Sopranos) certainly understands.

"He's an incredible businessman and he's got an enormous drive. He's always focused on what the next step is," Winter says. "I'm convinced that if he grew up in a different time and place, that he would be running a Fortune 500 company. There's no doubt in my mind."

50 Cent sure knows how to diversify his revenue streams. Not only does his movie open this week, but there's a related video game coming soon called Bulletproof. And the movie's soundtrack -- in stores Tuesday-- features eight new songs that 50 Cent wrote in his trailer between takes.

"I did use the actual scenes to create the themes of the record," the rapper says. "So there's a scene where a younger version of my character is looking through a storefront window at sneakers, and that's what created the concept for a single off the soundtrack, Window Shopper."

50 Cent says he generally doesn't find doing business in Hollywood that different from doing business in the 'hood.

"The bottom line is that you're selling something different, but if you can maintain the quality of it, I think generally the marketplace will accept it and it will be sold."

Does he plan to continue acting?

"I would commit to doing another project if I came across a screenplay that was exciting enough," he says.

The rapper claims he has no fears about acting again, or even about his own security. If he's afraid of anything, he says it would be to return to his humble beginnings.

"My worst nightmare would be to be back where I started," he says. "In the history of entertainment, we build entertainers in order to destroy them -- for the sake of entertainment."

But 50 Cent is a survivor, and he says he isn't surprised he made it out of his stormy upbringing alive.

"For me, I spent a large portion of my life being the only person who believed in my ideas and things that I wanted to do," he says. "Like, even my grandparents -- I love them to death, but after I got shot, I mean, even they looked at me like, 'Oh, man, he's still over there.' "

And he's not likely to go away any time soon.