Maybe IT goes without saying, but it's hard to get taken seriously if your name is Ludacris. That's why the rap star, following the path of the Rock, Andre 3000 and 50 Cent, is checking his stage name at the door as he pursues a second career as a Hollywood actor.
"This is a different business and I do want to be taken seriously, so it's back to being Chris Bridges," said the 30-year-old whose name appears in the credits of two films in October, the video-game adaptation “Max Payne” and Guy Ritchie's latest London crime spree, “RocknRolla.”
The Atlanta-based rapper also has his sixth album, "Theater of the Mind," due Oct. 21, and a dizzying array of business ventures underway (a television show on TLC, a trendy new Thai restaurant in his hometown, his own record label, a hosting gig for XM satellite radio, a new urban culture website called MyGhetto.com, etc.), but the three-time Grammy winner said his priority is learning the rhyme and reason of Hollywood.
"I can see a point where acting is my full-time job, really," Bridges said. "I will always be involved in music, but it may be more behind the scenes, as a producer, I will always do that. But when I look at 10 years from now, I don't think rapping is necessarily what I want to do when I'm in my 40s. My focus is film."
Rap is like professional boxing -- it's defined by rivalries, dominated by youth and cruel to champions who get too comfortable and forget their street roots. That's one reason there's been such a pipeline between the recording studio and Hollywood soundstages; Ice Cube, Snoop Dogg, Tupac Shakur and Ice-T are just some of the savvy stars who used their hip-hop fame as a platform.
Bridges was one of the stars of John Singleton's "2 Fast 2 Furious," a 2003 film that was hardly embraced by critics ("It doesn't," Roger Ebert wrote, "have a brain in its head"), but the acting newcomer got noticed for his easy grace in front of the camera. Bridges captured more attention for a memorable turn as a car thief in "Crash" (which went on to win the Oscar for best picture) and as the aloof rapper Skinny Black in the acclaimed "Hustle & Flow." Next came a role in "Fred Claus" and a two-episode appearance on "Law & Order."
"I learned something with each role I've done; that's the way I'm building on my acting and trying to watch the people around me and listen to the directors," Bridges said. "It's a lot different than rapping, but the key to both is to really be in the moment."
