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In recent years, it's seemed like nearly every time a film and television star has gotten the urge to cut a record, disappointing results have followed. However, for all of the Billy Bob Thorntons or Russell Crowes whose musical works are met with warm indifference, there is occasionally a screen star that makes the transition to behind the microphone so easily, it's difficult not to take notice.
However, it wouldn't be telling the whole story to simply label "Wayne's World" (1992) and "True Lies" (1994) co-star Tia Carrere as singing actress -- the Hawaii native had always dreamed of a singing career, one which got sidetracked by years in front of the camera.
Carrere, who will be appearing Oct. 30 to Nov. 1 at the Chiller Theatre Expo at the Hilton Parsippany, recently spoke with Metromix Jersey Shore about her work in film and music.
"My friend that I used to play with when I was 14 (Hawaiian musician and songwriter Daniel Ho) ... we were both in a jazz orchestra when we were teenagers and we entered talent contests together and that sort of thing," Carrere said. "And he continued with his music and I branched out and got discovered in a grocery store and that's how I got my first movie and just continued on my acting run until I did ‘Wayne's World' and came out with a record (1993's ‘Dream'). Music has always been a passion of mine, so it's something that I sort of kept going in tandem with my acting."
Carrere and Ho renewed their musical partnership once he moved to Carrere's current home city of Los Angeles, and the pair eventually decided to record an album of their favorite Hawaiian songs. The result was the Grammy-nominated 2007 album "Hawaiiana."
"I guess that's sort of like entry-level Hawaiian music if anybody from the main land would want to hear some songs that are familiar but done in a very different and fresh way," Carrere said.
Following "Hawaiiana," Carrere and Ho collaborated with lyricist Amy Ku'uleialoha Stillman, who holds a PhD in Hawaiian language studies, for the 2008 album "‘ikena," which went on to win the Grammy for Best Hawaiian Music Album.
"(That album) goes back to things that we love about Hawaii; even though Amy lives in Michigan and Daniel and I both live in Los Angeles, Hawaii's still on our hearts," Carrere said.
"And also, one of the things we still love to this day, even though it's just terrible for us, but we don't eat it all the time, is Spam," the singer and actress revealed. "Hawaiian people love Spam, so we have a song to Spam on there ("The Spam Song"), which is hilarious."
The trio recently teamed up again for this summer's jazz-influenced LP "He Nani," which is currently available on iTunes.
"Daniel and I, we've always wanted to do sort of like a jazz-inflected record harkening back to when we first met when he was doing charts for the jazz orchestra and I was a vocalist and so this new record, ‘He Nani,' is a marriage of our early influences of jazz with the Hawaiian language," Carrere said. "I mean, my favorite song on it is (the title track), I think it's just a perfect blend of where we came from and marrying it to what we're doing now."
With an active music career now under her belt, it makes sense that Carrere's breakout film role was Cassandra, the rocker chick who stole the heart of Wayne (Mike Myers) in "Wayne's World" and its 1993 sequel, "Wayne's World 2." Carrere recalled getting the part that kick-started her on-screen career.
"What was amazing was that I had a contract for ‘Baywatch' on the table and I had heard about the role in ‘Wayne's World' and then I read the script and I thought, ‘OK, I have to have it.' It was like, ‘It will be mine. Oh yes, it will be mine,'" she said. "And I don't know, I just had this feeling that nobody else, none of the actresses that I knew that were out there I thought could pull this off but me because of my strong background in music, and that really gave me a lot of confidence going in the room."
Carrere is currently in pre-production on "Wave Dancer," a biopic of Hawaiian surfing legend Rell Sunn which she is co-writing, producing and starring in. Carrere said she has spent about three years at work on the project, which is set to be directed by "Real Genius" (1985) and "Valley Girl" (1983) director Martha Coolidge and should begin filming in February or March of next year.
Carrere said it was her friend, "Growing Pains" actress Julie McCullough, who convinced her to be a guest at this year's Chiller Expo, and she's looking forward to running into some of her fellow Chiller guests.
"I'm a big fan, so I'm dying to get, you know, Ann-Margret's signed photo and other people that are going to be there, it'll be nice," she said. "I did a couple of songs with Peter Fonda and I found in my archive an old photo of he and I from the movie that we did (1990's ‘Fatal Mission'), so I'm going to give him some and I'll have some, and it sounded like a fun thing to do and I'm going to be doing it with one of my best friends, Julie, so that'll be great."
And while she may be looking forward to spending Halloween weekend at Chiller, Carrere also made a shocking revelation: she hates scary movies.
"I can't stand them, because I have to put my hands over my eyes and peek through my fingers like a little girl because I can't stand it, it's too scary to me," Carrere said. "I'll cover my ears and I'll cover my eyes so I can see exactly one millimeter of the film anyway. It's painful, it's absolutely painful."
However, her scare-easy attitude didn't stop her from taking a supporting role opposite late "Jaws" star Roy Scheider, Daryl Hannah and Eric Roberts in the thriller "Dark Honeymoon," which was released last year and featured a steamy scene between Carrere and Lindy Booth.
"(I had) just a couple of scenes in that," she said. "That was funny, because I had to make out with my girlfriend from the TV series (‘Relic Hunter,' which ran from 1999 to 2002). She was my assistant on my TV series, and it was hilarious. When I found out that she was cast in the lead, I was like, ‘Oh, this is going to be weird.' The funny things we do.
"I like being creepy and weird in movies, it doesn't necessarily mean that I want to watch them. Because I was a witch in (1997's) ‘Kull (the Conqueror') and that was fun. They wanted me to be the lead girl in that, to be like the damsel in distress, the one that needs to be saved, and I said, ‘You know, I really want to be the evil witch, I think that would be so much more fun to do,' and it was, it was a gas."
