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 Jude Law and Norah Jones arrive for the screening of My Blueberry Nights at the 60th annual Cannes Film Festival yesterday. (Andrew Medichini/AP) |
CANNES, France — Amazingly, because cynics were baying for blood, singer Norah Jones survives her film debut in My Blueberry Nights without embarrassing herself or her co-stars.
The moody Wong Kar Wai romance, in which Jones plays opposite Jude Law, Natalie Portman and Rachel Weisz, made its world premiere yesterday as the official opening night gala of the 60th Cannes Film Festival. It is no classic, not like Wong’s Hong Kong masterpiece In the Mood for Love, but Jones is good.
Yet now the soulful American daughter of Indian sitar master Ravi Shankar admits she was nervous.
“For me, I was not planning on making any kind of acting debut,” Jones told a Cannes press conference yesterday. So she rebuffed Wong’s initial advances after he targeted her as the lead of his first English-language, made-in-America movie.
“He knocked on my door out the blue and I just thought: ‘Well, I’m on tour and not an actress, so whatever.’ Then I finally watched one of his films for the first time. I watched In the Mood for Love and I thought: ‘Wow! That’s just the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.’ ”
When Wong pitched her again on My Blueberry Nights, a road movie in which a young woman with a broken heart tries to heal herself, Jones said yes.
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“I just, for some reason, had a blind trust. I just kind of jumped in a said: ‘Well, we’ll figure it out later, I guess.’ When I first agreed to do the movie, I was very nervous but excited at the unknown. As soon as I heard the cast list, I went gulp.”
And the first day on set, in a scene with Law, she was so terrified her voice squeaked. Wong and Law settled her.
“The thing is,” Wong said, “she became more and more relaxed and I could see the growth of Norah as an actress. Jude should take a lot of credit because, in a way, he is very generous.” So were Portman and Weisz, Wong added.
“I have to agree,” Jones said. “It wouldn’t have worked without all the actors being so nice as people.”
Not that she is set for a movie career. “I’m not sure. I still have a very long tour to go on and I’m not really planning right now.”