"What a Girl Wants" is the movie geared to show off the talents of Nickelodeon teen-turned-movie star Amanda Bynes. Oh, it does that all right.
Still — and, remember, you really will read it here first — the film will propel a clean-cut young Brit named Oliver James to classic overnight stardom. Making great chemistry as Bynes' musician/boyfriend, James, 22, shows off remarkable screen presence, not to mention a great voice that gives life to a quintet of songs, including a hot rendition of James Brown's "Get Up Offa That Thing."
"I've always had a fairly soulful voice," James admits. "I remember back at drama school (England's prestigious Guildford School of Acting), we put this kind of compilation play together and I used it and I knew it was there somewhere. It was just finding the good producer. Well, two of my songs made it to the soundtrack, which were originals, and then the other three were the covers."
Not bad for an actor whose previous claim to fame was a walk-on role in a U.K. TV series called "The Afternoon Play." As it was, he almost missed trying out for this "Wants" role.
"He was the absolute, last-minute person," recalls director Dennie Gordon. "I even remember my casting director saying, 'There's one more guy.' Man, I'm so glad I saw him. I mean, I think he's going to be a big star. Finding him was one of my early joy-bombs of the casting experience.
"And who woulda thunk he has it all? I'm gonna get a singer? I'm gonna get an actor? I'm gonna get a guy who looks like that? I'm gonna get a Tom Cruise smile? How 'bout that Tom Cruise smile? He's just magnetic," Gordon says.
Getting to the audition in the first place was a very circuitous route, as James explains:
"It was May 2002 when a friend asked if I wanted to go along and meet this guy who was putting together a girl/boy group. He worked with Simon Phillips from the Spice Girls and was the guy who put the 'American Idol' concept together.
"I got in and started recording some demos with these guys. It wasn't exactly what I wanted to be doing because it was pop music and I was a trained theater actor, but it was nice to be busy.
"Then they got heavy with me, putting pressure on things, saying if we're going to get a label we can't have you going off doing acting because you need to commit time to do this. So, I reluctantly went to my agents at the time and said, 'Look, just put me up for quick work, commercials, whatever.'
"They called literally two hours after our meeting. 'We have this audition for you, a movie.' I guess I did something right because I met the casting directors and I met the director, the producer and then Amanda, and then it went from there."
And how. His scenes with 17-year-old Bynes, playing a spirited American impulsively leaving for London to find the father (Firth) she's never seen, went splendidly. "Amanda has been working in television since she was 8 or 9, so she was great to learn from," James says. "It was nice to just work with somebody who has done it all before. It also showed me how much I have to learn.
"It's also fortunate for me to have her market and that exposure. Before I auditioned, I watched Amanda (on "All That") and she was 12 at the time and I'm thinking, 'This can't be the girl I'm playing against,' not realizing it was actually a repeat."
Who woulda thunk?
From:// Sun Newspapers of Cleveland
Date:// April 4, 2003
Article By:// John Urbancich