Beyonce: The Golden Grrrl in Goldmember

She must have needed to. After all, Knowles was born well after the '70s--how could she possibly have been familiar with the excesses of that era? "I watched Foxy Brown a bunch of times," she admits, "and Cleopatra Jones, The Mack and Shaft. But I'd seen a lot of them before because my mother is a big fan of Pam Grier's--she's legendary. The women in these movies were sexy, but also smart and strong. They had attitude, but they weren't so overconfident you couldn't relate to them. The day I met Mike, I watched Foxy Brown over and over."

Mike Myers is considered one of the most adept comedians around, but he's also rumored to be not so easy to work with. Beyoncé reports to have had no problem with him. "He made me feel comfortable," she says. "It was good that Mike was there when I was auditioning, but it was scary too because I was nervous. My palms were sweating. He's so brilliant, I was intimidated. But I didn't try to be funny. When I try to be funny, I just act dumb and corny."

During the first day of shooting, Knowles had to film the scene where she sings the title song "Goldmember," a rowdy, raucous ditty which was cowritten by Myers. "When Beyoncé got up and performed it," says producer Lyons, "you could just feel--everybody on the set knew she was something special."

"Jay and I just looked at each other," says Myers, "and said, 'A star is born.'"

When I relay these comments to Knowles, she seems thrilled. "Filming that scene broke the ice," she says. "Basically, the song lyrics are all about a gold member. Now, a gold member is not a topic I would normally sing about, but when Mike asked, 'How do you feel about singing a song like that?' I said, 'I'm not singing it. Foxxy is."

Clearly, Knowles relished playing this character. "She's fast with a comeback, smart, knows her way around and is constantly trying to keep Austin on track."

Not too much like previous Austin femmes, played by Elizabeth Hurley and Heather Graham. They were asked to portray patient sidekicks, not tough leaders. "If Foxxy met those characters, she would probably smack 'em," says Knowles. "Make this girl mad and she'll knock you out. She has this attitude and spice about her. Not to say that the other girls didn't have their attitude, but Foxxy has some built-up issues.

"We had so much fun while filming," continues Knowles. "Mike was so funny that everyone on the set was laughing when he was in front of the camera. In the corner of my eye, I could see cameramen and crew members cracking up silently. I wanted to laugh out loud, too. But then I realized that as much fun as it was, it was a job and time is money."

Turns out Knowles caused Myers to giggle a little himself, too. "She's really great with accents," he says. "She would make fun of my Canadian accent all day. She'd say 'soary' instead of 'sorry,' 'bean' instead of 'been.' And I have been known to finish a sentence with the word 'eh.'"

But it wasn't all laughs on the set. Early in production, an extra mouthed off to the press that Beyoncé wasn't cutting it. Several national columnists picked up on the story. Even months after the fact, the topic upsets her. "Because of the history of Destiny's Child," she says, "I was aware that some people will take your words or actions and make them into something you didn't mean. People like to hear negative things about celebrities. When I started hearing this stuff about me messing up lines--and it happened in the first couple of weeks of filming--it really affected me. The worst thing about it was they said I looked pretty and was nice, but I basically wasn't doing the job. I'd rather do an acceptable or exceptional job than just look pretty. I thought, Here I am new to movies and this mess is the first thing people are going to hear about me? My feelings were hurt really bad."

Producer Lyons calls the rumor patently false. "She was really shaken by it," he says. "At first, we thought of doing nothing but then we took a page from the Bill Clinton campaign and personally called journalists and told them how unfair and untrue it was."

"When things like this happen," says Knowles, "everyone will tell you, 'It's a compliment because it means people are interested in you. It goes with being a star.' That helps. Mike helped me a lot. He called me late one night after shooting, even though he must have been tired, and told me that every day someone says something like that about him. He said, 'It's mean, it's untrue and you're incredible in the movie. You know this is the last Austin Powers movie and it's important to me that it's good, so if you couldn't bring what we needed, we wouldn't have picked you.' That was so nice. It made me feel more secure."

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