CHER RETURNS TO MAKING MOVIES

Singer and actress Cher is returning to the big screen after an absence of 10 years.
Cher, who last appeared before the cameras in the 1999 movie Tea With Mussolini, is to co-star with fellow pop singer Christina Aguilera in a contemporary musical called Burlesque.
Aguilera, 28, will be making her movie acting debut playing an ambitious small-town Iowa girl with a big voice who comes of age in a neo-burlesque club on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles.
The club is run by Tess, who is played by 63-year-old Cher. Tess is a former dancer who struggles to keep the club open and gives the young girl a chance to shine.
Cher will sing on-screen in the movie, which stars filming in November. It is being made by the Hollywood studio Screen Gems and produced by Donald De Line.
While her voice has been heard in many films, Burlesque will mark the first time she will be seen singing in a film she stars in.
Steven Antin will direct the movie from a script he wrote that was revised by Susannah Grant.
This will be the first big screen movie that Antin, an actor and screenwriter up until now, has directed. He previously wrote the scripts for such obscure movies as Chasing Papi, Gloria and Inside Monkey Zetterland.
Screen Gems president Clint Culpepper said he has been lobbying Cher to make her big screen return, and once she said yes, it was a matter of creating room in her busy schedule of touring and performing in Las Vegas.
“She brings a soulfulness and gravitas to this character that will ground the story,” Culpepper said. “The only person who was more excited than I am is Christina.”