Daily News (August 16, 1998)

'Dance' With Her

Vanessa Williams has a leg up in her new role

By Martin Booe

"I´m just glad about the fact that a dance movie actually got made," says Vanessa Williams. "It seems like they only come out about every 10 years."

Well, not quite. The surprise hit from Australia "Strictly Ballroom" was only six years ago. But if you're Vanessa Williams, awaiting a film role that will allow you to sing, dance and act must feel like being a kid counting the days till Christmas. In this case, Santa came in the form of director Randa Haines ("Children of a Lesser God"), who tapped Williams for a starring role in "Dance With Me."

Williams had already earned her feature-film stripes doing admirable turns in "Soul Food" and "Eraser," but longed for a part that would let her work her Broadway chops.

Except for the obligatory theme song, Williams doesn't sing in "Dance With Me." But boy, does she dance! Appearing alongside Latin pop star Chayanne, Williams also finds herself elevated to co-star status--a first for her.

The 35-year-old entertainer has a reputation for treating publicity as somebody else's problem, but today she's marching in step, fielding a slew of reporters with a dancer's stamina. She looks great: light brown hair with gold highlights, rose-lavender nail polish and a snow-blinding smile--eyes so clear and deep you could almost go snorkeling in them.

The movie takes place in the world of competitive Latin ballroom dancing. Williams plays Ruby, a heartbroken instructor in a down-at-the-heels Texas dance studio run by John Burnett (Kris Kristofferson). Burnett has rescued hunky-yet-humble Rafael Infante (Chayanne) from a life of good rum, great dancing and devoted friends in his native Cuba, and put him to work hanging up ugly party decorations in the dingy studio. Before long, Chayanne and Williams are kicking up a few sparks of their own, as their radically different dance styles come into play.

Williams is cautiously optimistic about the movie. If it takes off, it could catapult her career into a new dimension. Best of all, it could give her the clout to green-light Broadway musicals--her heart's desire.

"My goal was always to be on Broadway, so this is an extension of what I do on Broadway," she says, referring to her star turn in "Kiss of the Spider Woman" in 1994. "You can't limit yourself, and I've always had big aspirations."

But since she's now a showbiz veteran, she's biding her time. "We'll see how much money [the movie] makes and what happens after that," she says. "Frankly, it's all about the box office. And especially--being a black female in the film industry--if this makes money, then there'll be a lot more opportunities for me. Unfortunately, a lot of it has to do with the almighty dollar.

"Being on Broadway was always a dream, but when the box office went through the roof, that's when I knew I'd made it," she continues. "If this is successful, then I'll know I can do something I love and also be successful and make money. I'm not an established moneymaker, except maybe on Broadway. In music, I've done consistently well, but I've never had an album that sold, say, 10 million all at one time."

"Being on Broadway was always a dream,
but when the box office went through
the roof, that's when I knew I'd made it."

Easy does it

But Williams doesn't feel the weight of the whole picture is on her shoulders. "I don't feel I have the pressure of carrying the movie," she says. "People say, 'That's your movie,' but it's really Chayanne's movie, his story.

"The best things that have happened to me in my career have been sheer happenstance, or coincidental or fate," she muses. "Anything that I really wanted or tried to go for usually didn't happen because it wasn't meant to be or it didn't work out. I've had a career that's been like, 'Oh, I didn't know she could do that.' Or 'She's a one-hit wonder.' It's kind of fortunate. Because if you're expected to fail, and you do what you know you can do, you're always going to surprise people."

And Williams has bug since proven her ability to surprise. Her greatest triumph, of course, was bouncing back from the scandal that deposed her as the first black Miss America in 1984 after those now-legendary nude photos of her. She instantly acquired the kind of notoriety that usually ends a career.

The man who pulled her out of that nosedive was her manager--and, later, husband--Ramon Harvey, a man 12 years her senior. He did it by focusing on her singing career. The strategy worked: Her 1988 debut album, "The Right Stuff," garnered four hits and three Grammy nominations. Her musical track record--two platinum albums, 10 Grammy nominations--gave her an opening to the world of acting.

New beginning

Her career began to flower, but her marriage died on the vine, and the two were recently divorced. It left Williams in more control of her career than she'd been used to.

She calls the divorce "a wakeup call for me to snap out of it and be aware of what's going on professionally and financially," she says. "Now I have my household to manage by myself. I'm much more aware of offers that come in, what my financial nut is. Part of that was my decision when I was married. I didn't want to know about any of the financial stuff. Now I'm involved in everything, which is exhausting also."

"I'm not obsessed, though," she continues. "My reality is such that I think about a lot more practical things like my kids, and that certainly takes the emphasis off achieving in the business."

A practicing Catholic, Williams was raised by music-teacher parents in the small town of Millwood, N.Y. She lives nearby and falls back on the grandparents for baby-sitting duty.

When not on location, she's fully occupied doing "mom things" with her three children.

"It's been incredibly busy for me in terms of my career, and taken me away from my home a lot," she says. "I've been traveling all over the world for the past couple of years. Hopefully, in the future, I'd like to stay close to home a little bit more, be closer to the kids."

Even though her movie career is well under way, Williams would still take Broadway over Hollywood & Vine.

"Then I get to do it all, live, every night, and do it different every night. It's really an actor's medium. Onstage, you make it your own and no one's going to drag you off if your choice is different from the night before, so you can really be in control and change it every night."

She knows one other bonus to a Broadway career: "It keeps me in town with the kids, and I'm home by midnight."

As for her love life, Williams was last known to be seeing screenwriter Christopher Solomine, whom she met on location in Turkey filming "The Odyssey."

"Oh, he's still hanging in there," Williams says, a bit incredulously. Then she sighs and finishes: "People think show business is glamorous, and it is, but they have no idea how demanding it is."