Breakout role?
Maybe.
But Jessica Biel, who co-stars in the 1920s period comedy “Easy Virtue,” which opens Friday, isn’t owning that label.
“So many times I’ve heard, ‘This is the break. This is the one.’ I’m like, ‘Is it? Because it wasn’t last time.’ I really don’t look at movies like that anymore,” Biel said.
The 27-year-old Minnesota native is perhaps best known for dating Justin Timberlake, posing for Playboy while co-starring in the family TV hit “7th Heaven” and playing the romantic heroine of 2006’s “The Illusionist.”
As Larita in “Easy Virtue,” Biel sings, dances and shows off her comedy chops as a blond Yank who marries into a stuffy, aristocratic English family.
“It is very, very different than what I’ve done before,” said Biel in an interview at New York’s Regency Hotel. “Physically, I don’t really look like myself.”
Her striking blond coif was a last-minute decision by director Stephan Elliott (“The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert”).
“He just said, ‘What do you think about Larita being a platinum blonde?’ He sent me photos of Jean Harlow and all these old-school actresses that were blond. I thought, ‘Why the hell not?’ ”
Biel may surprise audiences as she belts out a swinging version of “Mad About the Boy.”
When Elliott heard Biel humming on the set, he asked if she would sing the Noel Coward tune, heard over the opening credits.
“I said yes immediately,” said Biel, who has studied music since she was 8 years old.
“I grew up wanting to be Whitney Houston. I was excited because I hadn’t gotten to sing publicly, if you want to call it that, in a really, really long time.”
When it came time to record, Biel left boyfriend Timberlake out of it.
“I was totally embarrassed,” she answered candidly. “I didn’t want him to have any part of it. I was sort of doing it on my own.”
