KEY POINTS:
The world is used to seeing a regal Alicia Keys perched at a grand piano, her soulful voice singing one of her many Grammy Award-winning hits.
Keys, armed with five guns, dressed in tiny black shorts, knee-high boots and fishnet stockings, is not the image the world expects.
That is precisely why the 26-year-old New Yorker chose the kick-ass role of assassin Georgia Sykes in the new gangster film Smokin' Aces as her debut feature film.
Hollywood directors have been pursuing Keys since her 2001 album, Songs in A Minor, sold six million copies, won five Grammys and made her a household name.
Her Hollywood suitors, however, wooed Keys with the wrong projects.
They enticed Keys with singing roles, but she was not interested in Whitney Houston-The Bodyguard type films.
Keys' busy music career also meant when an interesting script did appear she could not guarantee the three months out of her schedule needed to shoot the film.
"The scripts I have been offered ranged from everything from the most average, obvious singer roles to incredible ones with really well-known directors, but it just wasn't the right time," Keys said.
"I was probably in the middle of making an album and when I'm at that stage I needed to concentrate 100 per cent on the album.
"When I did Smokin' Aces, I concentrated 100 per cent on Smokin' Aces."
The film is a seedy, hitman action film by American director Joe Carnahan, who shook up the 2002 Sundance Film Festival with his independent cop drama, Narc, starring Ray Liotta.
Carnahan, 37, recruited Liotta for Smokin' Aces, with Keys, Andy Garcia, Ben Affleck, Jeremy Piven, Ryan Reynolds, Jason Bateman, rapper Common, Australia's Joel Edgerton and Kiwi Martin Henderson.
Liotta, Garcia and Reynolds play FBI agents trying to protect Piven's character, Buddy Israel, a Vegas-style showman turned informant.
The mob, however, puts a US$1 million ($1.47 million) bounty on the head of Israel, inciting a race between competing assassins across the US to kill him.
Carnahan used an interesting tactic to sign his all-star cast.
"The way I always went at everybody, knowing they had a fondness for the script, I said 'Why don't you play a role that is totally opposite to what you normally do as an actor?'," Carnahan explained.
"Piven and Reynolds are usually funny, so I said I'd deprive them of that.
"Alicia is this angelic woman, and I said 'You're not going to be like that in this'."
It worked with Keys.
She laughs as she recalls her meeting with Carnahan.
"He said, 'Alicia, we don't want you to play one of those soft, female roles where you are a love interest. Georgia will be amazing, she's powerful, she's a badass'," Keys said.
"I read the script and really understood what the role of Georgia would be and was onboard.
"Personally, growing up and witnessing the theatre and having great respect for the art of acting, it was important for me not to play a character who is a piano-playing singer.
"Or any type of singer.
"I really wanted to be totally different and completely take myself out of my comfort zone and go into a new head-space and new person."
Keys then began collaborating with Smokin' Aces' costume designer to create the look of contract killer, Georgia Sykes.
"They brought me a lot of skirts and things and we went through it and talked about it and decided shorts would be more comfortable and realistic with all of the action I had to do," Keys said.
"We even had to lengthen the vest because I had to wear a holster underneath with an extra gun.
"I had to fit ammunition in the boots."
Carnahan also introduced Keys to a mysterious weapons expert with experience in the seedy underworld of mobsters. "Joe never exactly told me what this guy's background was," Keys said. "He was a good guy.
"Even now he works closely with the world in which he trained us in. It was all kind of top secret, but he was incredible.
"He has seen the bad side of the world. I don't know exactly which side that would be, but he has definitely seen the bad side of life."
Keys expects some of her music fans to be shocked when they watch Smokin' Aces, but she believes that is healthy.
"That's the beauty of having your own opinion," she said.
She also plans to make more films. Her next project is a more sedate character in The Nanny Diaries, starring alongside Scarlett Johansson and Laura Linney.
Keys does not plan to take a break from music.
"No way. Are you kidding me!" she shrieks when asked if she thought about giving up music for a full-time acting career.
"I need music.
"I do music out of a necessity. I love music and it's something that really helps me as a person.
"I'm working on my new album now, actually, and that's going incredibly well and I'm excited to be bringing some new music out."
LOWDOWN
Who: Alicia Keys, singer, songwriter and now, movie star.
What: Starring as assassin Georgia Sykes in Smokin' Aces (out now), Hollywood's latest mob flick. Hip-hop artist Common also stars, as does Ben Affleck, Ray Liotta, Jeremy Piven, Andy Garcia and Ryan Reynolds.
Albums: Songs in A Minor (2001), The Diary of Alicia Keys (2003), Unplugged (2005)
- AAP
