“We were rehearsing for a scene one day,” director Ron Underwood said, “and Usher came up to me and said with a straight face, `Darrell Williams isn’t comfortable walking in a room like that.'”
Darrell Williams is the character Usher plays in the film In the Mix, which opens Wednesday.
“That showed me that Usher is living with that character, and only someone who is serious about acting lives with their character.”
Usher said, “When I was about 16 or 17, I was dating Ben Vereen’s daughter, and she introduced me to the world of Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly. When they called you an entertainer in Hollywood back then, they meant that you were a triple threat. I decided right then that that was what I was going to be.”
Usher has been acting since 1997, when he made a couple of guest appearances on the TV show “Moesha.” He later had a recurring role on the daytime soap “The Bold and the Beautiful,” His first film role was in the 1998 horror flick “The Faculty,” and he later appeared in “She’s All That,” “Light It Up” and “Texas Rangers.”
“In the Mix,” his first starring role, is the story of a nice but ambitious club DJ who falls in love with the daughter of an Italian mob boss, who is not entirely pleased with his daughter’s choice of a boyfriend.