Charm to spare

In “Love Don’t Cost a Thing,” an updated version of 1987’s “Can’t Buy Me Love,” Nick Cannon goes through a striking metamorphosis. His Alvin Johnson character is transformed from an intelligent but awkward social misfit to a pompous, pimp-like character after paying for the friendship of popular classmate Paris Morgan (Christina Milian), who he hopes will usher him from outcast to class king. The Alcon Entertainment film opens Friday.

Cannon, whose breakthrough role in last year’s surprise hit “Drumline” attracted the attention of fans and studios alike, brings a good deal of charm to both Johnson incarnations, making it hard to dislike the guy who abandons his lifelong friends, disobeys his supportive mother and even turns on Morgan once his popularity swells.

“If you’re playing a villain, you want them to love you as the villain,” the amiable Cannon, 23, says as he settles into a sofa at the Chateau Marmont in West Hollywood. “You want them to love you regardless. I always try to figure out, even if he’s a bad character or a jerk: What can you love about this character? If you can find that good, innocent side within that character, then that’s where the money is.”

Cannon’s collaborators expect his turn as Johnson to take him from creator and star of the Nickelodeon sketch comedy “The Nick Cannon Show” to Hollywood major player. “I think he’s the next Tom Cruise and this is his ‘Risky Business,’ ” director Troy Beyer asserts. The writer and director of “Love Don’t Cost a Thing” adds: “That broke him out, and that’s what I see for Nick.”

Cannon’s arrival in the current film offers evidence of a seismic shift in the way young black men are portrayed in cinema. Landmark 1990s releases such as “Boyz N the Hood” and “Menace II Society” presented black male teens as violent thugs and helped launch an entire “‘hood” movie subgenre, an unofficial descendant of the “blaxploitation” films of the 1970s. “Drumline,” which grossed more than $55 million domestically, helped show that young black men could carry a drama that focused on driven college kids rather than gangs and guns. Indeed, in “Love Don’t Cost a Thing,” Johnson is a gifted student with loving, supportive parents.

“The game has progressed a little bit to where there’s room for the high school comedy about a young black guy,” Cannon says. “We were just kicking down the doors with ‘Menace,’ ‘Boyz N the Hood’ and those types of things.

“Now the game is so open-minded. Then, there’s never been a person to come in this young in the game to play those type of roles. You have your Will Smiths, your Denzels, but those cats, by the time they get in that position, they’re in their late 20s, early 30s to where they can’t go back and play high school roles or early college roles. I think it’s just really the timing of me stepping in at the right time and saying, ‘This is a whole genre that hasn’t even been tapped into.’ ”

In person, Cannon radiates the same positive energy that characterizes his screen work. Dressed in jeans and a striped shirt, the San Diego native smiles frequently and seems grateful for his good fortune.

Charm comes naturally to the young star. “Nick is just really charismatic,” Beyer says. “Whether he was being geek or chic [in ‘Love Don’t Cost a Thing’], that was the one trait that actually had to be present at all times. This character had to have charisma at the end no matter what, because at the end, that’s what he sort of goes back to, being his charismatic self. That’s something that Nick innately has, and I knew I could take him anywhere with that.”

Johnson’s evolution in “Love Don’t Cost a Thing” parallels what is happening in Cannon’s burgeoning musical career. He’s going from PG (initially releasing the good-natured “Your Pops Don’t Like Me [I Really Don’t Like This Dude])” to playboy (recently teaming with R&B; superstar R. Kelly for the self-explanatory “Gigolo”). Cannon’s self-titled debut rap album, which features collaborations with hip-hop stars such as P. Diddy and Mary J. Blige, was released Tuesday on Jive Records.

An impression that he’s a workaholic doesn’t seem off base. For Miramax, Cannon is shooting “The Underclassman,” an action-comedy vehicle for which he wrote the treatment. He has a supporting role in the same company’s “Shall We Dance,” the forthcoming feature starring Jennifer Lopez and Richard Gere, and he’s developing “Jive Turkey,” a “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner” tale of an interracial Thanksgiving meal with the families of Cannon and his white girlfriend.

He’s also slated to star in “The Beltway,” a Washington, D.C.-based political thriller. The latter film hints at Cannon’s ambition. “You don’t automatically think Nick Cannon when you think political thriller,” Cannon says. “You see Tom Cruise or Ed Norton. But I want a piece of that.”

He also wants a piece of screenwriting. He’s at work on his first screenplay, a father-son vehicle that he hopes will be his “Good Will Hunting.”

Much of Cannon’s ambition can be traced to his parents. He split time between living with his mother and paternal grandmother in San Diego and his father in North Carolina. At 11, he auditioned as a stand-up comic for the “It’s Showtime at the Apollo” TV show. Months later he got his first stand-up exposure on his father’s public access religion show.

“People probably thought I was cute more than they thought my jokes were funny,” Cannon says with a huge smile. “They were all about Michael Jackson, roaches and Mike Tyson at the time. That’s all I really knew.”

He soon returned to California to live with his mother, who made him finish high school before allowing him to pursue an entertainment career full time.

His manager spotted him doing stand-up at L.A. clubs, brought him to Nickelodeon and positioned him as a teen comic. Cannon wrote material for his own show as well as other Nickelodeon fare, such as “Keenan & Kel” and “Cousin Skeeter.”

Will Smith also caught Cannon’s stand-up act. He was so impressed that he produced a pilot for the WB network featuring the young star and scored him a small role in “Men in Black II.”

Now that he’s enjoying success, Cannon hopes to inspire other young entertainers to follow their creative impulses. Through his Nick Cannon Youth Foundation, he plans inspirational conventions for young men with his father, who is a motivational speaker.

“I want to make my mark and still get a positive message out there in the world to let them know that you can do all of this stuff and still maintain a positive life,” Cannon says before heading to the recording studio to cap a 20-hour day. “I feel like those are the two things that I was placed here to do. That’s the vision that I have, and it’s inside me to let everybody know, ‘OK, I’m going to be the best entertainer I can be, but also the best person I can be at the same time.’ I want to show people how to do both.”