Non-singers welcome to apply

Many actors can belt it out despite lack of experience

December 17, 2009|By Zachary Pincus-Roth, SPECIAL TO TRIBUNE NEWSPAPERS

Kate Hudson sang songs from "Annie" around the house as a kid, but she never had a professional singing job until she auditioned for the movie "Nine." She walked in and started a song from the show "A Call From the Vatican." After her first line, a soaring "Guiiiidoooh," the director, Rob Marshall, stopped her.

"Does anybody know you can sing?" he said. Hudson blushed. "I don't think so," she replied.

Hudson, who landed the role of Stephanie, is one of many stars to reveal a secret singing talent, as movie musicals have become more popular in recent years. "Nine," with its bounty of Golden Globe nominations, is a clown car of bold-faced names -- Hudson, Penelope Cruz, Marion Cotillard, Nicole Kidman, Judi Dench, Sophia Loren and Daniel Day-Lewis in the lead role of the film director Guido Contini. This month also brings the opening of "Crazy Heart," with Jeff Bridges and Colin Farrell as country singers. These days, dubbing a performer's singing voice is not as acceptable as it was in the days when Marni Nixon provided the singing voice of Audrey Hepburn in "My Fair Lady" and Natalie Wood in "West Side Story."

So how do so many actors just happen to be able to carry a tune? A remarkable number of them have caught this current wave of movie musicals, starting with "Chicago" and followed by "Hairspray," "Enchanted," "Sweeney Todd," and "Mamma Mia!" Jim Carrey and Jake Gyllenhaal are attached to a remake of "Damn Yankees." Tom Cruise too has said he'd like to do a musical.

"The only one who told me at a party he basically can't sing at all is Brad Pitt," says Neil Meron, a prolific producer of musicals. "He said, 'Never come to me. I can't sing a note.'"

How to explain this explosion of latent musical talent? Making melodious notes come out of your mouth does not appear to have any connection to pretending to be someone you're not. Or does it?

The connection could start in childhood, when actors are more likely than others to encounter music. Many get their start in community or high school musicals, and some come from artistic households.

Bridges' family sang "Guys and Dolls" songs at the dinner table. His father, Lloyd Bridges, played the lead in "Man of La Mancha" on Broadway and came close to starring in "The Music Man." "I can remember Meredith Willson singing the score of 'Music Man' before it came out and coming up to me as a little kid and slapping me on the knee and saying, 'You got trouble, right here in River City,'" Bridges recalls.

Hudson's father, Bill Hudson, was a musician, and her mom, Goldie Hawn, started as a go-go dancer. Kate did musical theater as a kid and was married to Chris Robinson of The Black Crowes. "I feel like I've been around music a long time," she says. "I never had the opportunity to do it with acting. It just wasn't the path I went down."

Another theory is that singing and acting require similar tasks, such as expert manipulation of vocal chords. "Really good actors have really good ears," says Eric Vetro, Cruz's vocal coach on "Nine." "They have good ears to mimic dialects, and they have a good ear for different voices for their characters."

It still takes practice to turn these skills into smooth solos. Bridges, an amateur singer-songwriter, was already halfway there, says his "Crazy Heart" vocal coach, Roger Love. But before he coached Joaquin Phoenix to play Johnny Cash in "Walk the Line," Love said, "I can't guarantee that he sang 'Happy Birthday' at parties."

Cruz studied ballet for years but had never sung on screen before "Nine." Vetro coached her on her audition and then later in rehearsals, having her practice by singing songs like "America" from "West Side Story." "I wanted to stretch her range as much as possible," Vetro says. "The song she sings in 'Nine' has a really wide range -- it goes up to a really high note, but most of the song she's belting it out in a really low voice."

But technical skill is not as important as it seems. "The musical actor is not expected to be a recording artist," Meron says. "They're supposed to be able to tell a story with a song. It's a different skill set."

The idea that expert characterization and pure charisma can translate into a great musical performance -- regardless of technique -- makes the casting of Day-Lewis so tantalizing. "He's one of those actors who even if he couldn't sing, he could sing," says "Nine" producer Marc Platt. "It just so happens he can sing."

Skeptics will say that movie stars -- who probably lucked into that status in the first place -- are no better at singing than anyone else. Not all of them succeed at it -- one critic called Pierce Brosnan's warbling in "Mamma Mia!" "the best imitation I've heard of a water buffalo."

In movies, actors only have to make one good recording of a song, and pitch correction technology, which can automatically tweak a singer's voice so that it's more on pitch, is widespread, Love says.