Like so many other actors these days, Minnie Driver is taking her shot at riding the choppy rock star waters. But hers isn't the flashy, glittery attempt we've seen from teenaged actor-singers of late. Nor is she a hard-edged rocker like Russell Crowe or Juliette Lewis.
Instead, Driver has pursued the sensitive singer-songwriter side of melody, and has done so quite nicely with Everything I've Got In My Pocket, a country-tinged folk-pop offering.
Flanked by five musicians, the Good Will Hunting star showed just enough self-doubt at a late-night gig Wednesday to pull it off.
"Thanks for having me in this particular guise," crooned the 35-year-old after a warm reception at Lee's Palace.
"I did this before . . . so I'm kind of legit," she assured her audience, a group several years older than the usual twenty-something punksters drawn to Lee's Palace, a dark, dingy, cave-like rock bar.
With her navy blue peasant skirt and wispy vocals, the vibe was distinctly hippie. She's the Dido of the folk genre.
A burning curiosity prompted Paula Doherty, a 40-year-old from Toronto, to dish out $20 to see the pretty actor in her new vocation.
"She's great," gushed Doherty midway through the show. "She's got a good voice. She's got a humbleness about her."
The daughter of a financier and part-time model, Driver grew up singing. As a teen she performed in jazz clubs to earn spending cash, a job she continued while studying drama at college.
She had a brief brush with the record biz when her group, The Milo Roth Band, was signed to Island. The label never released the outfit's album.
Driver then started working on a solo record when she landed a role in Circle of Friends, the 1995 romantic drama with Colin Firth and Chris O'Donnell.
That job lead to Gross Pointe Blank and later Good Will Hunting.
She never seemed to have the time to go back to music and would have regretted not returning to her first love, she says.
"I would have definitely wondered," the London-born Driver said in an interview before her concert. "I've seen myself as much as a musician as an actor in my life because I've done it for as long as I've acted. I didn't really separate it."
For the CD, she wrote all her own lyrics and music. She included one cover, a slowed-down version of Bruce Springsteen's Hungry Heart (he's heard it and bought a couple copies of her CD, she says) because it was a childhood favourite.
She's obviously enjoying the down-to-earth vibe that comes with the singer-songwriter lifestyle.
It's more genuine, she says.
"This is so much better. It's you," said Driver, who wore her hair curly and much messier than her usual polished red carpet style.
"(In Hollywood) you're filtered through the director, the light and camera man, the studio, the publicity campaign. You're not you."
And while she's still reading movie scripts, she's writing more songs and forcing herself to take a relaxed approach to her career.
"It's cool coming into something as a woman in her 30s ... to make something as an adult as opposed to making it as a kid where your head is getting blown off by all the fame and celebrity," she said.