Jessica Biel sings. That may come as a surprise to audiences who know the actress from her primarily dramatic work on television and in films, including the long-running “7th Heaven,” and the big-screen “Stealth” and “The Illusionist.”
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Biel, 27, marked her major musical-theatre debut this weekend in Los Angeles, as the Hollywood Bowl presented a three-night run of a concert version of the classic “Guys and Dolls.”
“I haven`t really done anything like this,” Biel said, following a dress rehearsal Friday afternoon. “Well, I did one thing in college. In college, I did a concert version of `Tommy` when I was in college. But, other than that, it was 10-11-12, 8-9-10-11-12 when my big musical-theatre world was happening. So it`s been 10-plus years since I`ve done anything like this.”
For “Guys and Dolls,” Biel takes on the role of Sarah Brown, a Manhattan missionary at odds with a gang of gamblers — and eventually in love with one of them. It`s a far cry from one of Biel`s last roles: a stripper in the steamy, straight-to-video “Powder Blue.”
“No, definitely not what you would think to go from `this` into this,” Biel said, with a smile. “But that`s the fun of this world. That`s what I love about this job. You get to do something like that and then you go completely extreme to the other side of it, and terrify yourself in some other way. It`s really about terrorising myself. I`m fully terrorised, and when is the next challenge that will come around the corner?”
Perhaps Broadway? “Oh, yeah. I would love to,” Biel replied. “Literally, that is one of my eight-year-old dreams. That`s like my little eight-year-old inside me is cart wheeling around, thinking about that idea.”
Jessica Biel in “Guys and Dolls” plays through Sunday night at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles.
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