Mariah Carey In Precious
Mariah Carey's acting career didn't really get off to the best of starts when Glitter was critically mauled back in 2001.
But the singing superstar looks set to get the last laugh as her new movie Precious is bringing her praise and a string of awards.
Singer to actor is nothing new and in the late nineties Mariah Carey followed suit with comedy The Bachelor.
But it was Glitter in 2001 that grabbed everyone's attention for all the wrong reasons. Carey starred as gifted young singer, Billie Frank, who overcomes a turbulent childhood and struggles to find her true identity and voice.
During her childhood, Billie is abandoned by her drug-addicted mother and is remanded to an orphanage. Years later, Billie is discovered by charismatic, irresistible DJ Julian Dice who hears her demo gets her a record deal.
She soon falls for him and he becomes her partner, producer and lover. With Dice, she begins an exciting but often volatile and precarious journey as she struggles through her personal and professional life, riding the rollercoaster to superstardom.
Despite having Carey in the lead role the film was savaged and went on to be a huge box office failure. It grossed just $5.2 million worldwide after being shot on a budget of $22 million.
But things got worse a Carey went on to receive a Golden Raspberry for her performance.
Despite appearances in WiseGirls and Death of a Dynasty it's fair to say that Carey's acting career hasn't exactly set the world alight.
But it sees that with Precious, which is as adaptation of the gritty novel Push by Sapphire, all that could be about to change.
The movie follows Claireece Precious Jones who is physically and emotionally abused by her mother and raped by her father, she is pregnant by him for the second time.
Just as she's about to give birth to her second child, Jones is accepted into an alternative school where a teacher helps her find a new path in her life.
Carey takes on the role of social worker Miss Weiss who discovers that there is incest in the family home.
And it's a change of look for the singer who sheds her make-up and glamour to take on the dowdy but caring Miss Weiss.
The movie has been met well by the critics being nominated for a string of awards, including Best Picture Drama at the Golden Globes, but Carey's individual performance has also been heavily praised.
For her performance she picked up Breakthrough Performance Award at the Palm Springs International Film Festival and has gone on to be nominated the Black Reel Award for Best Supporting Actress & Best Ensemble and NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Motion Picture.
But Precious isn't the only big screen success that she has had over the past year as she also received good reviews for her performance in Tennessee, which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2008 and was released last year.
The actress admitted that the role has given her confidence and we may now see her forge a successful acting career... watch this space!
Precious is released 29th January
FemaleFirst Helen Earnshaw
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