Actors Who Sing and Singers Who Act

We all have our Flashdance fantasies, an inner Liza Minelli or hidden Fred Astaire just waiting to be set free. But if you think it's a cinch to pull off the triple threat of singing, dancing and acting, just remember one word: Madonna.

Pick up a copy of Swept Away in the cheap-o bins of your local movie-rental palace and marvel with perverse fascination at how Guy Ritchie could make his own wife look so awful.

It's a tad easier for actors who try to sing, if only because the technology is there to avoid utter fiascos. In Frank Sinatra's day, you had to clinch a song on a single take, live with a full orchestra. Nowadays, you record 48 tracks in private and then producers go crazy touching it up - audio air-brushing, if you will. "Everybody does it that way now. It's very rare that an artist won't be touched up," says Elaine Overholt.

She's the vocal coach who channelled her soothing optimism to get Renée Zellweger, Catherine Zeta-Jones and Richard Gere over their butterflies and pysched to belt out the show-stoppers in Chicago.

"It was unbelievable to watch their self-confidence crumble at first," Overholt remembers, sitting beside a plaster Elvis in her cozy Toronto studio.

One of the tricks up her sleeve was to make these mega-stars look in a mirror as they sang. "Richard Gere," she says incredulosly, "he couldn't do it at first." But he did, and was so thrilled when he nailed a difficult song that he pranced around like a little boy.

So don't ever take that seemingly seamless song-and-dance number for granted. The shores of the treacherous crossover passage are littered with humiliated performers. And even those who have made it to the other side haven't always had an easy time.

Let's take a minute to celebrate this Hollywood Crossover Honor Roll.

ACTORS WHO SING

Renée Zellweger

INCRIMINATING EVIDENCE: The ex-cheerleader's fumbles include a quickie marriage/annulment with country crooner Kenny Chesney and an on-again/off-again relationship with carbs.

ROAD BLOCK: Rob Marshall's determination to cast Zellweger as Roxie Hart in Chicago raises eyebrows. Gwen Verdon made the role famous on Broadway. The zenith of Zellweger's screen singing to that point is Bridget Jones doing karaoke. At the beginning of Chicago's rehearsals, she resorts to lame excuses - an urgent need for latte - to avoid vocal coaching.

LAST LAUGH: She'll play Janis Joplin in a biopic of the sultry rock legend.

Jamie Foxx

INCRIMINATING EVIDENCE: Born Eric Bishop, he picks a unisex stage name in the belief that women get more attention in show biz.

ROAD BLOCK: Even though he went to college on a piano scholarship, the former TV sitcom star must nevertheless submit to a rigorous audition for Ray, in the demanding presence of Mr. Charles himself. The fact that Foxx wins a best-actor Oscar for his portrayal (and is nominated that same year for his supporting role in Collateral) doesn't soothe vitriolic former fans who contend all the success is making him cocky.

LAST LAUGH: Foxx's second album, Unpredictable, hit the charts running. Kanye West, Snoop Dogg and Mary J. Blige oblige with appearances.

Audrey Hepburn

INCRIMINATING EVIDENCE: She packs up her Givenchy gowns and retires to Switzerland, devoting herself to UNICEF good deeds long before Angelina Jolie.

ROAD BLOCK: Hepburn wins the coveted role of Eliza Doolittle in My Fair Lady, but her voice isn't considered strong enough - despite the fact that she sang Gershwin memorably in Funny Face. Eliza's songs are dubbed by Marni Nixon, also the voice of Deborah Kerr in The King and I and Natalie Woods in West Side Story. Julie Andrews wins the Oscar that year as Mary Poppins.

LAST LAUGH: Breakfast at Tiffany's composer Henry Mancini says Hepburn's Moon River in is his all-time favorite rendition of the song.

SINGERS WHO ACT

Cher

INCRIMINATING EVIDENCE: Her self-improvement resolutions should include cutting out plastic surgery and rock-star boyfriends with bad hair.

ROAD BLOCK: Sonny Bono makes two movies with his then-wife, leading to a running joke in Hollywood that Cher wants to be considered a serious actress. Robert Altman is forced to defend his decision to cast Cher in Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean.

LAST LAUGH: Cher proves she can survive just fine without feathers or sequins, playing a frumpy lesbian opposite Meryl Streep in Silkwood and an (Oscar-winning) Italian widow in Moonstruck.

Yves Montand

INCRIMINATING EVIDENCE: The son of leftist Italian immigrants to France gets his show-biz break after Edith Piaf sees him in a nightclub and discovers her taste for younger men.

ROAD BLOCK: He comes to the U.S. in 1960 with his wife, beloved actress Simone Signoret. Montand is cast as a Gallic seductor in George Cukor's romantic comedy, Let's Make Love. And that's exactly what he does, both onscreen and off, with co-star Marilyn Monroe. Watching from the sidelines, Signoret and Monroe's hubby, Arthur Miller, get to act very British.

LAST LAUGH: At 65, Montand triumphs on both sides of the Atlantic as the penny-pinching peasant in Jean de Florette.

Frank Sinatra

INCRIMINATING EVIDENCE: You can take the boy out of Hoboken but you can't take Hoboken out the boy: Sinatra never loses his life-long taste for the scrappy life.

ROAD BLOCK: In 1952, a vocal-chord hemorrhage threatens Sinatra's recording career. Fans desert him after a very public affair with Ava Gardner breaks up his marriage. Lobbying for the role of the rebellious GI in From Here to Eternity, Sinatra is dissed by studio heads, who tell him, "You're just a singer."