Passionate, strong-willed and ferociously independent, Hollywood actress and rock star Juliette Lewis is starting afresh with a new album and new role.
Although she's been on the big screen since she was 14, the world really took notice of actress Juliette Lewis after she appeared as a white trash bride Becky in Lasse Hallström's What’s Eating Gilbert Grape. She came to the attention of mainstream audiences with her award-winning turn in Martin Scorsese’s Cape Fear. The scene in which she was seen sucking Robert De Niro's thumb re-wrote film history and saw her awarded an MTV Video Music Award for Best Movie Kiss in 1992.
From then on, Juliette's career went stratospheric. She starred opposite then-boyfriend Brad Pitt in Kalifornia, played serial killer Malloy Knox in Oliver Stone’s psychedelic gore fest Natural Born Killers and a fearless vampire killer in From Dusk Till Dawn (both scriped by Quentin Tarantino), had her enter the pop culture landscape of the 1990s. As Mallory Knox, also gave her her first chance to sing in a movie. It was not without repercussions for Juliette herself: "While singing, I suddenly became nervous because I realised I’m letting a bird out of its cage right now. I always felt, I should sing, but at the same time I kept it to myself."
She kept on keeping the secret until Kathryn Bigelow’s millennium thriller Strange Days, where she played a club manager’s neglected lover with a thing for PJ Harvey covers. Hardly Wait was one of the highlights on the movie’s soundtrack, but it took Juliette another eight years until she decided to concentrate on music full time, and in the next few years, she got her own band Juliette & The Licks together.
“After our last album, my guitarist wanted to go on a solo tour, the drummer wanted to have a good time more than anything else," said Juliette. "I didn’t share his attitude. What I need is blood, enthusiasm and fire.”
Out of the ashes of The Licks, rose her new band The New Romantiques. As the name of their first album, Terra Incognita, suggests, the Californian is moving into new territory: the sound shifts away from the Lick's familiar riffwork, into darker, more Romantinc territory, her lyrics have taken a more cryptic and intimate and the entire feel about it breathes a different spirit – possibly the result of a new selection of musicians and the involvement of Mars Volta guitarist Omar Rodriguez at the mixing desk.
And Juliette is also returning to the big screen with a role in Drew Barrymore’s upcoming directorial debut Whip It in which she plays a roller derby player called Iron Maven. The film also features Taurus World Stunt Awards favourite and Tarantino alumnus Zoe Bell as Bloody Holly.
To celebrate the release of her album, Juliette is literally 'on the road', calling at Kaufleuten Zurich, Zurich, (15/11), Paradiso Amsterdam, Noord-Holland, (18), Zeche Bochum (19), Posthof Linz (20), Magazzine Generali Milano (21), Alhambra Paris (23), Heineken Madrid (25), Itzela Oiartzun (26), Apolo Barcelona (27), The Peel Kingston, London (29), Wedgewood Rooms Portsmouth (Dec 1), and Boom Taksirat Fastival Skopje (5).
To hear some of her latest song and for more information, visit Juliette's MySpace site.
Comments
Add a comment