Christina Aguilera hopes Hollywood leads to the road back

A few paparazzi were loitering on the hot concrete outside of Chelsea Handler’s talk show studio in West L.A. last week, waiting for pop diva Christina Aguilera to emerge so they could take her picture. But they weren’t sure their idling would pay off.

“Her walking with a coffee cup is basically worth nothing,” said Bobby Rachpoot, a photographer for Bauer Griffin. “Unless she is with a new boyfriend. That would be like $100,000.”

In the wake of a tough year, it seems Aguilera’s stock has plummeted. More than a decade ago, she became one of the biggest names in pop music alongside Britney Spears and ‘N Sync when her single “Genie in a Bottle” hit the airwaves. Since then, she has sold more than 16 million albums in the United States and won five Grammy awards. But the 29-year-old’s fourth English-language studio album, “Bionic,” debuted in June to mixed reviews and sold only 110,000 copies in its first week of release. Two weeks before that, she abruptly postponed her North American summer tour until next year, citing her busy schedule. And last month, Aguilera filed for divorce from her husband of five years, music producer Jordan Bratman, with whom she has a 2-year-old son.

Now, though, Hollywood is giving Aguilera a chance to be the comeback kid. Just before Thanksgiving, she’ll make her acting debut in “Burlesque,” a PG-13 musical in which she stars opposite Oscar winner Cher. If the movie hits big, it could catapult her the way “The Bodyguard” did Whitney Houston. But if it flops, a la Mariah Carey’s disastrous 2001 turn in “Glitter,” it may further tarnish her once-flourishing career.

In the film, Aguilera plays Ali, a wide-eyed Midwest transplant with Hollywood dreams. When she arrives in L.A., she stumbles upon a Sunset Strip burlesque club, where she is taken in by owner Tess (Cher) and becomes the star of a song-and-dance show. In many ways, the movie is a custom-built showcase for the singer, with a handful of flashy musical numbers that play to her strengths — wailing atop a stage while executing taxing choreography. Even her look in the film — gaudy bustiers, fake eyelashes and glittery eye shadow — mimics the costumes she sometimes dons in concert.

If Aguilera is worried about being taken seriously as an actress — or about any of the troubles in her life — she hides it well. The singer, who has been in the spotlight since she was cast on “The New Mickey Mouse Club” at age 12, knows how to present a calm countenance in the eye of a storm.

“With the transitions that are happening in my life, I just can’t wait to look forward to the future — as an actress, as a mom, as a woman who has experienced so much at this point in her life,” she said, seeming eerily blissful while sitting in a plush massage chair in her dressing room at Handler’s studio after filming an interview. Her publicist sat within earshot, mindlessly scrolling through her Blackberry.

Aguilera had changed out of a figure-fitting dress into a sweater and a pair of leggings. Sitting cross-legged, she looked tiny and childlike, despite the bronze powder caked on her cheeks and her bright fuchsia lipstick.

She puts on a good show, says Steven Antin, the writer-director of “Burlesque.”

“She’s guarded and hard to get to know at first. Not unfriendly, just guarded,” he said. “She’s been doing this for a long time, so you need to earn it with her.”

Antin decided Aguilera was right for “Burlesque” after watching a 2007 episode of “Saturday Night Live” in which she performed a spot-on impression of Kim Cattrall, who played the libidinous cougar Samantha on HBO’s “Sex and the City.”

“It was really over the top and very funny and very broad, and I said, ‘If she can do that level of comedy, she can do this,’ because comedy’s the most difficult thing,” he recalled. “Of course, there’s always a concern, like, ‘Wow, what’s it going to be like when you get on the set?’ Maybe I had some blind faith.”

Before Antin’s script came her way, Aguilera had only casually been pursuing the idea of taking on a film role.

“It was nothing that I was every night passionately reading scripts and going through them and sweating about it,” she said. “I would read them and usually just nothing sparked my attention enough. I really just wanted to open myself up, if anything, not to a musical at first. But this whole idea of burlesque — they say they wrote it with me in mind — it was almost like it was made for me.”

Still, Aguilera admitted to doubts about the career move. She was anxious about starring with the larger-than-life Cher, of course, but also worried about the basics of film: Should she hire an acting coach? Was it best to look directly into the camera while performing musical numbers?

“In approaching it, I was like, ‘How do I do this? Do I memorize the whole thing at once? How is this possible? How do people do this all the time?’” she said, laughing at herself.

Stanley Tucci, whose stage-manager character mentors Aguilera’s in the movie, said he tried to help the novice actress feel comfortable on set, urging her to ask for an extra take if she felt she needed one.

“You could tell that there were times that she was nervous just about doing certain technical things that she didn’t know, but that just comes with experience,” he said. “But it’s a very impressive first performance. I certainly couldn’t have done that in my first film.”

Pop stars don’t have the best track records on the silver screen. Most famously, there was Carey’s bomb “Glitter,” followed by another ill-advised turn in “ Tennessee.” Britney Spears had her acting debut (and swan song) with the forgettable 2002 road trip movie “ Crossroads.” And while she didn’t become a laughingstock, Miley Cyrus didn’t exactly bowl critics over with her performance in the Nicholas Sparks tear-jerker “The Last Song” this year.

“You’ve heard a lot of horror stories,” Aguilera acknowledged. “And a lot of people don’t make successful crossovers. That’s why I think I also just really took my time in choosing the right thing and not just saying, ‘Hey, let me try this just to do it and say I did it.’ If you don’t, I think the work would suffer and then you’d get written off as just another one trying to do something they can’t do.”

Though “Bionic” was a disappointment, few in the music industry are ready to write off Aguilera. Those who worked on the futuristic-themed pop album blame the album’s underperformance on poor marketing and promotion.

“The type of record she made, I don’t necessarily think that it was connected to the people that she was making the album for properly,” said Tricky Stewart, who produced several tracks on “Bionic” and served as executive music consultant on “Burlesque.” “I don’t think that she was given enough singles and enough push to really let her vision into full fruition.”

“I think what happened is sometimes Christina is ahead, and sometimes she’s behind — her timing is off,” said Linda Perry, who has written a number of songs for Aguilera, including her hit 2002 single “Beautiful.” “It was an energy between timing of management and label and how they do things — marketing stuff. That’s what went wrong with ‘Bionic.’”

The album’s lackluster sales fueled rumors that Aguilera would be dropped by her longtime label, RCA Records. The speculation prompted Irving Azoff, Aguilera’s manager and executive chairman of Live Nation, to take to his Twitter feed to defend her.

“No one is giving up on bionic,” he tweeted in August. “christina is under a long term contract with rca records! live nation is not a record company. focused on burlesque right now!”

Antin, for one, believes the movie will mark a “whole new chapter” in Aguilera’s life.

“She had a tough couple of years,” he said. “I think it’s definitely a new start for her, and I think it’s something she’s very excited about. She’s a mom. She has a baby. And she has a very, very, very full life in terms of just her career. It’s 24/7. I think that she’s holding up remarkably well.”

Aguilera said she was unsure when she would resume touring in 2011 but said she looks forward to performing some of the numbers from the film’s soundtrack for her fans. She’s slowly beginning to conceptualize her next record. “There’s been a lot of feelings bubbling up and wanting to come out,” which she is eager to express, she said.

As for film plans, she said “Burlesque” gave her the acting bug but admits she struggles while reading scripts.

“My attention span is very short for getting through them, so I do what I can,” she said with a sigh.

And though Screen Gems executives have told her that “Burlesque” test audiences have received her well, Aguilera said experience has taught her to tame her expectations.

“As far as like looking at numbers and figuring out test scores and things like that, I really don’t try to get involved in that,” she said. “And sometimes they’re like, ‘Why aren’t you excited? Be excited.’ But I have a big thing about jinxing myself before things happen. … I don’t like to count my chickens before they’re hatched.”

amy.kaufman@latimes.com