Aguilera did more than sing for 'Burlesque'

Christina Aguilera, who turns 30 on Dec. 18, reveals she had been looking to make the leap into acting for a long time but nothing appealed to her before she was offered the starring role in "Burlesque."

Aguilera, who's been singing and dancing since she was a tot, was ready for the task. "Burlesque," written and directed by Steven Antin, offered her an opportunity to apply her creative skills and exercise some new ones. She not only sings and dances in the movie, she also had a hand in writing three original songs. Oh, yeah, and she acts, transforming her character, Ali, from naive ingénue to confident burlesque queen.

"This was no normal movie to shoot because I had to write music for the film and write it from Ali's point of view," she says.

Writing songs expressly for a movie was different from writing and recording for herself as a pop singer, she discovered. She drew inspiration for her songs from the script, with Antin's guidance.

"Steven would write me bullet points of what he wanted the songs to convey and what he wanted the audience to believe with the message of the moment," she recalls. "Then, I would look at the script and see what the scene called for, and get into the moment of how Ali would feel. It was all about Ali, not me."