Singer Jewel's Screen Debut Is a Gem / Pop star plays Civil War widow in `Ride With the Devil'

Madonna, Doris Day, Bing Crosby, Barbra Streisand, Frank Sinatra and even Bob Dylan and Fabian have tried it -- with varying success. Now it is Jewel's turn to test whether the magic that has catapulted her to fame in the music world translates to the silver screen.

The trick is to disappear into a character so audiences forget they are watching a popular singer. Sinatra pulled this off some of the time; Madonna has yet to. In "Ride With the Devil," Jewel is surprisingly effective at turning herself into a Civil War widow who is part Scarlett O'Hara, part Melanie Wilkes.

One reason Jewel is believable on film may be the period costumes, which are a far cry from the low-cut T-shirts, jean jackets and leather trousers her fans are used to seeing her wear.

Jewel, 25, studied acting in boarding school and had an inkling she'd be able to finesse a movie role. Still, it was no sure thing.

"I definitely like a challenge, but picking such a hard dramatic role for my first movie was like jumping into the deep end of the pool," she says, sipping tea late one morning. "It was horrifying. Oh f--, I was worried. It took years off my life. At the same time, I loved the perversity of knowing there is a lot at stake and if you pull it off, it's good, and if you don't, you're screwed."

Her speaking voice has the same lilting, honey tone heard on her best-selling albums, "Pieces of You" and "Spirit," and on her new release, "Joy: A Holiday Collection." With her oval face and long, straight blond hair, she resembles Helen Hunt, if Hunt ate three square meals a day. Jewel has that rare ability, especially for a celebrity, of being right there, thoughtfully answering each question with no apparent desire to be somewhere else. Or maybe she really is a good actress.

Pushing herself to do something outside her field would have been a lot easier if her CDs weren't all over record stores, she says. "That kind of courage pre-fame is real easy, because if you fall on your ass, who cares? But fame is an odd creature. It has a life of its own and an influence on you, which is a force to be reckoned with.

"When you're famous and you fail, it's in front of the whole world. The world does not value growth over perfection. People are very unforgiving, and that causes self-censorship. It makes you go, 'Ooh, I've got to be safe and stick with what I know.' I knew I might look bad, and knowing that, I went ahead and did it because otherwise you die creatively."

Jewel had been looking to make a movie, but the timing had to be right so it wouldn't interfere with her recording or touring schedule. Just as a window of opportunity opened, her agents were approached by Avy Kaufman, casting director for "Ride With the Devil."

"I'm way over 40, so I didn't know who Jewel was," says Ang Lee, the film's director, who is best known for "Sense and Sensibility." Kaufman sent him Jewel's music videos as well as a tape of her playing Dorothy in "The Wizard of Oz" as a teenager.

Meeting with Jewel, Lee made it clear she would have to take acting lessons for three months before any casting decision was made. "I was very frank with her. She was so devoted to the possibility of acting in this movie, she agreed to the lessons."

This proved to be more stressful than she thought. "I was touring and taking acting lessons in between," Jewel recalls. "I had some days where I went, 'I'm going to be all right' and other days where it was like 'Uh, I can't get out of bed.' "

Lee suggested she take up tai chi as a way to relax and get into the role. "He could see I wasn't real grounded at that time of my life. All of a sudden I was famous and I had a stalker during that time and I was working with this brilliant director, who really intimidated me. The tai chi was just to get me settled."

Even with all that going on, Lee's instincts told him Jewel was up to the role. "Her part doesn't require her to carry the movie, so I didn't think it was such a big risk," he says.

It could be a risk with a payoff if her legion of fans, most of them young women, rush to see her in "Ride With the Devil." The film stars Tobey Maguire and Skeet Ulrich, who are not hot enough yet to get people into theaters on the strength of their names.

However, as the film's screenwriter, James Schamus, points out: "Being a star in one area is no guarantee of ticket sales in another." He admires Jewel for her willingness to "completely erase her rock-star personality on the set. She worked like a maniac on this movie. You don't see people work like that too often."

The first few weeks on the set, "Jewel was pretty raw," Ulrich says. "She didn't know what was going on when it came to technique. She didn't even know what a mark was," he adds, referring to where actors are supposed to stand.

But she caught on quickly. Ulrich thinks it helped that she seems in some ways like her character, Sue Lee, a shy Southern woman who comes into her own when she has to fend for herself during the grueling war years.

"Civil War widows became quite notorious by 1862-63," Schamus explains. "Because they were sexually aware, they realized that in order to survive and get through the battle, they really had to go out there and attract husbands. There was a kind of sexuality and assertiveness these women had going after their next guy. They began to address men in public and introduce themselves -- all things that were quite shocking at the time."

Jewel nails her character's sexuality, and there were other ways in which she could relate to Sue Lee.

"I was raised on the land. I was raised to be feminine, but not in the kind of contrived way where you are playing a game of seducing men," she says.

"But I have never lost a husband; I have never slept with a man who ended up dying right afterward."

She also never wore a corset before she had to squeeze into one for her role. Like all self-respecting 19th century women, Sue Lee wouldn't have gone out without one. "That was a hard part about the movie for me. The corset was so tight, I couldn't breathe when I bent over. I wanted to die," Jewel recalls.

Everything else about making a movie appealed to her, however, and she would like to do it again, although writing songs and singing take precedence.

"Music allows you to talk directly to people. No other art medium does that. I can actually tell people what I think. I can get in front of kids and say, 'Don't lose hope' or 'Gee, I feel like s--.' "

Next time, she would like to be in a contemporary film. But she isn't rushing into anything.

"One of the nice things about the position I'm in is that I don't have to be an actress," Jewel says. "I don't need the money, so I don't have to take parts I don't want. It's a purely creative endeavor. That's a luxury most actors don't have. I can wait and be real picky."

'RIDE WITH THE DEVIL'

The movie opens December 17 at Bay Area theaters.