KEY POINTS:
There was a moment during the filming of the new Hollywood musical, Dreamgirls, when Beyonce Knowles looked into a mirror and didn't recognise herself.
It was early last year and the then 24-year-old was standing backstage at Los Angeles' historic Orpheum Theatre preparing to shoot a scene with
co-stars Jamie Foxx and Eddie Murphy.
She had shed 10kg after a rapid weight-loss diet, and was wearing a cheap wig and unflattering clothes from Detroit's Motown era of the 1960s.
But as she looked into the mirror and examined the stranger, she could not have been happier.
"When you look in the mirror and you don't see yourself, it really helps you portray the character," says Knowles, who plays Deena Jones, a character loosely based on Motown diva Diana Ross and her supergroup, The Supremes.
The movie is also based on the successful 1980s Broadway musical, Dreamgirls.
But Knowles' dowdy look changes as the musical follows the rise of her character's group, The Dreamgirls, over several decades.
Her 16-year-old character blossoms into a beauty.
"The fact the character had so much range, that's what attracted me," says Knowles.
"I was able to be someone aged 16 who's very plain."
The look was new to Texas-born Knowles, whose music career is filled with Grammy awards and album sales topping 50 million.
"I was the plainest at the beginning," she says. "They had to make me look really ragged, when everyone else looked glamorous.
"Then I was like a butterfly. Deena goes through the greatest transformation. She was a flawed, insecure person. She let this man completely control her. She was completely the opposite to me. She was so weak.
"I thought this is something I can show that I can be someone different from myself.
"That's why I wanted to lose the weight, that's why I suggested the big eyebrows and all of the things to make Deena completely different to me."
The diet was the controversial Master Cleanse, a 10-day fast where she consumed only fresh-squeezed lemon juice, cayenne pepper, maple syrup and water.
"It's a fast," Knowles says. "It cleanses your whole body. But I also dieted after that for months until I finished the movie.
"After that I ate everything I could find and now I'm back to my normal weight."
Nomination
The performance may earn Knowles an Oscar nomination when they are announced in the next few weeks.
She has already picked up a Global Globe nomination for the role, competing against some of Hollywood's best - Meryl Streep, Annette Bening, Renee Zellweger and Toni Collette - for the best actress in a musical/comedy.
The ambitious Knowles, who successfully broke away from her own famous trio singing group, Destiny's Child, for a Grammy award-winning, multi-platinum solo career, has her sights on an Oscar.
She did not think it would be possible so soon.
"I wasn't expecting it from this movie," Knowles says. "I wasn't expecting to become a bigger star or to get an Oscar for Dreamgirls.
"I just wanted to be part of something that was relevant and was amazing and showed me in a different light.
"If people want to give me Oscar buzz, excellent, because one day I want to win an Oscar.
"But I feel I have a couple of other movies to do and still grow.
"Hopefully, I'll get that part to show I can do even more than what I did in this film."
Knowles' Dreamgirls character comes under the control of car salesman-turned music mogul, Curtis Taylor jnr, played by Foxx. It is a situation Knowles says she has never faced, even in her earlier days when as a 14-year-old her group Destiny's Child signed its first record deal.
"To be honest the record label didn't have much input because they didn't think we'd do that good," she says.
"So we wrote our own songs and sold a lot of records.
"We had proven we knew what to do, so they didn't get involved.
"Really, they have never really got too involved because, thank God, they didn't care enough in the beginning to tell us what to do."
Knowles says she has also been blessed with competent, business-minded family members, including her father Matthew, and mother Tina, protecting and guiding her from an early age.
Her boyfriend, rapper and music mogul Shawn "Jay-Z" Carter, also helps her. "Honesty around you is the most important thing in the world when you're a celebrity," says Knowles.
"It is something that 99 per cent of us don't have. I ask God all the time, 'Why was I so lucky?'
"I was fortunate to have family that are very good at what they do.
"My father is not my manager because he's my father. He's great at it.
"My mother is a great stylist.
"Kelly Rowland, my cousin, was in a group with me. Everyone around me is family and they tell me the truth and tell me when I do wrong and when I do great.
"Most people, they surround themselves with people who they pay, so the people tell them whatever they want to hear. Before they know it they have completely lost themselves.
"One thing I focus on as much as my craft is maintaining myself because I don't want to wake up one day and have no idea about anything because everyone has shot a bunch of bull to me."
LOWDOWN
Who: Beyonce Knowles
Born: September 4, 1981, Houston, Texas.
Key roles: Austin Powers In Goldmember (2002); The Fighting Temptations (2003); Pink Panther (2006).
Latest: Dreamgirls, as singer Deena Jones.
Key albums: Destiny's Child - The Writings on the Wall (1999); Destiny's Child - Survivor (2001); Beyonce - Dangerously In Love (2003); Beyonce - B'day (2006).
- AAP