Alicia Keys: Soul singer, action star

Classically trained, the classiest of soul divas and classic beauty Alicia Keys is a class act by any measure. I mean, no less an eminence than Bob Dylan writes songs about her.

It was inevitable that the New York prodigy would get movie offers.

But instead of starting out as a nice, innocuous bit of romantic interest, the 11-time Grammy-winning artist opted for a screen debut that the toughest gangsta raptress might have thought twice about doing.

In the ultra-violent, roughly comic caper "Smokin' Aces," Keys plays Georgia Sykes, half of a hard-bitten, trash-talking, probably lesbian assassination team. She spends much of her screen time in the midst of an epic hotel hallway shootout, dressed in a trashy Nevada call girl disguise that accentuates her curves while camouflaging a small arsenal of guns and ammo. And she proves as strong and deadly as the dozens of guys she fights with.

"The minute that I read the script, I knew that it was so out of my normal character, so out of what so many people probably expected of me, that I knew it was the right thing for me to do," said Keys, who not only graduated from Manhattan's Professional Performance Arts School at the age of 16, but was her class valedictorian.

Her next movie is a slightly less, um, physically demanding part: She's co-starring with Scarlett Johansson in the film version of the best-selling expose "The Nanny Diaries."

And a new album is set for release in June. But there have been no negotiations, apparently, concerning a Dylan duet.

"I could not believe it," she said of finding out that she was name-checked, somewhat lustfully, in "Thunder on the Mountain," the lead track on the songwriting legend's last album, "Modern Times."

"Totally not expecting it, obviously. He's such a lyrical genius, such a storyteller, a person who has so much history - and as a writer myself, I admire him greatly.

"But I haven't called him," she said. "I figure, certain things like that, it's better from afar." *