14 DAY TRIAL // Rihanna made her acting debut in “Battleship” and, though both the movie and her performance didn’t really impress fans and critics, she’s still determined to have a proper acting career. She’s already decided she won’t go down the same route as other pop stars, by doing a rom-com.
And that’s because Whitney Houston warned her that rom-coms, and particularly those from Tyler Perry, are a very bad idea, Radar Online reports, citing a source close to the singer.
As per insiders, Perry has been actively “courting” Rihanna for the past year and a half, thinking he could build a movie around her. Even if she doesn’t deliver as an actress in front of the camera, a film with Rihanna as lead would still make a killing at the box office because people would rush to see it, if only out of curiosity.
Unfortunately for Perry, Rihanna will hear none of it and she’s already turned him down. She “pointedly avoided meeting with him” afterwards, because he keeps pressing her, says a source.
In being this indelicate, Rihanna is following up on Whitney Houston’s advice who once told her that, if she wanted a career in film, Perry was the one director she should avoid working with.
“Whitney put her off Tyler by warning her bluntly that ‘Tyler’s films are for fading black stars, not rising ones. Rihanna so respected Whitney because in addition to being one of the biggest pop stars ever, she starred in hit movies such as The Bodyguard,” an insider explains.
“She’s ruling out doing a Tyler Perry-style romantic comedy because she thinks she works better in action roles, playing the tough girl,” adds the source.
Apparently, Rihanna is “under a mandate” to sign on to another movie by the end of the year, so the pressure is big to make up her mind.
Besides “Battleship,” Rihanna also made a small cameo in last year’s doomsday comedy “This Is the End.” Before “Battleship” came out, she was telling interviewers that she wanted to put her music on hold for a while as she focused all her efforts on getting her acting career off the ground.
She was dead serious about it too, she insisted, because she wanted people to know that she was an artist in the true sense of the word, not just good at music. So far, she hasn’t had much success with it, but who knows what the future holds for this ambitious pop star?