Jessica's taking it step by step
(The Courier-mail)
Updated: 2007-02-11 19:56
She's a pop singer, a pin-up beauty and a paparazzi favourite, but Jessica Simpson insists she's just "a normal girl".
With her fifth album released late last year and a new movie in cinemas, normal might be a bit of a stretch.
At least in real life. On the big screen, she plays a very normal discount store cashier in Employee of the Month.
The role is an intentional departure from her sexy stint as Daisy Duke in last year's Dukes of Hazzard. But, says the 26-year-old starlet, it also represents a new grown-up chapter in her life as she learns to take charge of her career, her future and herself.
"I'm kind of doing it by doses and, along the way, figuring myself out and learning to belong to myself, learning to be committed to myself," she says. "I see a lot of change in my life right now. I'm really grasping hold of what I want for the first time."
What she wants is to keep on being superstar famous while growing as a performer on stage and on screen.
She knows that means living in a fish bowl - her every move scrutinised, her love interests transformed into tabloid fodder. It means being followed by photographers and trailed by microphones that could capture her mangling of the English language.
But she'll take all that.
"It's worth it," she says. "My career is more than what I hoped for."
The Texas-born blonde says that though she never expected to become a movie star, she's embracing the opportunity.
So far, she's stuck to eye-candy roles that call for short shorts and cleavage-baring blouses. But it's all on purpose and part of her plan, she says.
"I haven't wanted to take a lead role yet because I do want to learn," Simpson says, adding that she's happy to "take in that moment of just playing a straight-laced, normal, Mid-western all-American girl."
Greg Coolidge, director and co-writer of Employee of the Month, says he had reservations when the studio suggested Simpson for the part.
His concern: "Can she act?"
He was "expecting her to be bad" in Dukes of Hazzard, he says. But when he saw her in a commercial for acne products, he was convinced she could handle the role.
"She was totally charming," he says.
The demands of the part were perfect for Simpson.
"Nothing against Jessica, but I had written that part just as sort of a device anyway," Coolidge says. "It's really not about her."
In the film, Simpson plays a pretty cashier who inspires a competition between two workers at a chain store.
Both men (comedians Dane Cook and Dax Shepard) hope to win her love by earning the coveted title of Employee of the Month.
Simpson shot Employee during her divorce - a challenge in itself, she says.
"I was going through a really rough time in my life but it was good escapism. It was getting out of the world that I was in and getting into a world of being fought over by boys."
It sounds similar to real life for Simpson, who has been linked with Cook, Hazzard star Johnny Knoxville and most recently with musician John Mayer.
