A master plan in motion

BEYONCe walked out of her dressing room with a barely there black outfit, glossy lips and spiked heels and took her place between the camera and a plain white screen inside corporate offices disguised for the day as a high-fashion music video site. She smiled and nodded to the director. Music began to blare, and the singer pretended to belt out her new song -- just another day at the office for one of pop’s biggest stars.

But then a funny thing happened.

Instead of shimmying to a dance-floor anthem or fluttering her eyes through a heartfelt song of devotion, Beyonce began rocking on her toes, pumping her fists and whipping back that famous mane of hair. She pumped her fists like the righteous Mary J. Blige and glowered like Tina Turner. So this is what it’s like when Beyonce is angry ...

“Yes, it’s a pretty empowered song and it’s a mature song, definitely,” she said later of the music-video taping for “Listen,” which as a relationship song is pretty much the musical equivalent of a face slap. She chuckled at that description. “It is a lot of fun to sing.”

The song is one of the singles planned for Beyonce’s “surprise” album, “B’day,” which hits stores Tuesday (the title is a nod to the fact she turns 25 the same day). It was recorded in less than three weeks and submitted to officials at her label, Music World Music (part of Sony’s Columbia Records), who weren’t expecting a new batch of work from her until next year. That makes the whole affair sound like a toss-off project, but the singer says it’s really just a function of her revving career motor. “I just don’t know how to relax, really.”

Clearly. That’s why the second half of 2006 is shaping up to be the season of Beyonce. In December she stars with Jamie Foxx, Jennifer Hudson and Eddie Murphy in “Dreamgirls,” a film adaptation of the Broadway show about the tempestuous backstage life of a 1960s girl group that sure seems like the Supremes. “Listen” was inspired by the film and will be the only song on the soundtrack that is not part of the original Broadway show. (It will be a bonus track on “B’day.”)

In the film, which is expected to make an Oscar run, Beyonce portrays a character named Deena who was modeled on Diana Ross -- one who struggles to find happiness amid the bruising machinery of show business.

“As a woman she is just so trapped,” the singer said of her screen role. “She has lost herself, and she lost her dreams. She is with a man who is so controlling, and she completely didn’t know what she wanted in life.”

In “Listen,” Beyonce said she uncorked all the emotions that she experienced walking in the shoes of the fictional girl-group veteran. “I was this character for six months. And it all came out in this song.”

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Talking tough, standing firm

NO matter the inspiration, a scolding song by Beyonce these days will instantly be parsed for coded messages about her relationship with Jay-Z, the superstar rapper who has been her beau since 2000. The singer laughed when asked whether she expects “Listen” to be heard as something it’s not.

“That’s what people do, I know that, but there’s nothing I can do about that. That’s how it is. It’s part of the whole thing, right?”

The new album has hard, lean beats, and it’s brimming with uptempo songs. The themes are female independence and venting. Swizz Beatz, Rodney Jerkins, Rich Harrison, and the Neptunes represent the expected gallery of high-profile producers, but (in part because of the condensed recording period) Jay-Z is the only guest artist heard. Beyonce said she looked back in her career for a template for the musical and the album: “ ‘The Writing’s on the Wall’ is the best Destiny’s Child record to me. It was very aggressive, and it was all the records that I think some women needed to hear to give them strength. This record is like that, very empowered and a lot of the subjects are about a woman in this relationship and she’s ready to break free.”

This is Beyonce’s second solo album, following “Dangerously in Love,” a big hit in 2003 (it has sold 4.3 million copies) and the CD that spawned that year’s most memorable summer hit, the disco-shimmery “Crazy in Love.” On its heels came talk that she would return to Destiny’s Child, the R&B; group that brought her fame, but the film career and this new solo effort seem to be pulling her further and further from a shared spotlight. It may be that the only girl group you’ll see her in any time soon is the Dreams, the faux 1960s act of “Dreamgirls.”

It’s not her first film -- she spoofed blaxploitation heroines as Foxxy Cleopatra in “Austin Powers in Goldmember” and stood next to Steve Martin during his extended pratfall in the ill-advised remake of “The Pink Panther.” But this time, as she puts it, she had a role that “required me to show everyone, myself included, that I have chops as an actor.” Invited to read for the role, she latched onto this as her chance to enhance her stock as a Hollywood player; the singer performed at the Academy Awards last year and has said in several interviews that she aspires to return some day to the ceremony as a nominee.

Not only is her role in “Dreamgirls” modeled on Ross, Beyonce candidly admits that she hopes she can pinch a bit of the R&B; legend’s luck. Ross was nominated for an Oscar for her screen debut in “Lady Sings the Blues,” as the tattered, drug-worn Jazz Age icon Billie Holiday.

“People really respected her after that, they saw her in a new way,” Beyonce said. “It’s something I thought a lot about, absolutely. I couldn’t help not thinking about the connection. She was the inspiration as far as the look and her mannerisms. I had my whole trailer filled with pictures of her. It was like a shrine for months. And I watched ‘Mahogany’ a hundred times. It’s strange the connection, it’s weird actually. She loved this woman, and she played her part [in ‘Lady Sings the Blues’]. Now I’m loving her and playing her. And hopefully one day the same thing will happen for me. It kind of gives you chills to think about it.”

It’s quite a display of strong self-regard that Beyonce not only sees herself as a movie actress but also as a potential film subject. Still, her peers say she is worthy of being taken seriously.

She came to the role focused. After being invited to read for the part, she hired an acting coach and, being quite the fashion plate, she also went shopping. “I went to a hundred vintage shops looking for the ugliest dress I could find because at the start of the movie, I’m 16 and I don’t have good taste. I got my hair and makeup done and showed up for the reading and, the next day, they called and said they had found their Deena. I was the first person cast in the film. I’m very proud of that.”

Last February, while shooting was underway, the singer had a strange out-of-body experience. She was at Clive Davis’ Grammy week party at the Beverly Hills Hotel when she noticed someone out of the corner of her eye. She went rigid and stared straight ahead. The same thought kept running through her head: Oh, my God, she’s sitting right at the next table. There were Oscar winners and rock icons floating around the ballroom, but the source of Beyonce’s anxiety was none other than Miss Diana Ross.

“I couldn’t even bring myself to look over at her,” Beyonce said of that awkward night. “It was like she wasn’t even a real person to me by that point. But then we did talk later, and she said she is a fan of mine, and she wished me luck in the movie. It means a lot to me that she gave her blessing.”

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On a well-plotted path

FOR pop stars, drive is often far more important than actual talent. Beyonce, who has both, inherited the careerist quality from her father and manager, Mathew Knowles, who worked at Xerox before he pieced together a business plan for a female R&B; vocal group that was modeled on the Supremes and TLC. The daughter saw that succeed and has set her sights on the second act of her career. “Dreamgirls” is a major component, but she weighs every move, every song, by the standards of the long view.

“I try to think about everything in terms of how will it sound in 10 years, how will I feel when I look back on the decisions I’ve made, the things I did and didn’t do,” said the singer, who was raised in Houston -- a fact clearly conveyed in her honeyed drawl. She has said in interviews that she views age 30 as a good time to add marriage and children to her life.

That Beyonce has a famous boyfriend who raps about his strength and street background and a father who controls much of her business dealings (not to mention her mother, Tina, who is ever present as fashion designer and consultant) makes it natural to wonder if she, like her “Dreamgirls” character, might be smiling at the microphone but struggling for some life control backstage. She shook off that idea.

“There were some things about her that parallel my life -- she started in a group and them starting out so young and her being so driven and she becomes a solo artist -- but all the dynamics in the group are so different, a completely different experience in my group. Her personality traits and the way she reacts to things, all of that is very different than me.”

Destiny’s Child had its share of turbulence, and Beyonce’s role in that almost certainly was on the mind of the “Dreamgirls” filmmakers when they approached her. The Knowles family famously fired three members in the span of two years and the hard feelings were aired in public. Mathew Knowles was described by the ousted singers as a suffocating tyrant, a topic that still makes him fume. Beyonce addressed all of it in the Destiny’s Child hit 2001 song “Survivor”:

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You thought that I’d be helpless without ya

But I’m smarter

You thought that I’d be stressed without ya

But I’m chillin’

You thought I wouldn’t sell without ya

Sold 9 million

I’m a Survivor.

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Exiled member LeToya Luckett made an impressive comeback this year and scored a No. 1 album. Beyonce said she had not listened to the album but heard the two singles on the radio and thinks “it’s really great” that her former compatriot is “getting her music out there.” Beyonce and her father each issued press releases this year rebutting the rumor that the timing of “B’day” was to return Beyonce to the marketplace to tamp down the possible competition with Luckett. “It makes me sad,” Beyonce’s statement read, “that people are trying to stir up a controversy where there is none.”

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Picking her moments

THE music sector that Beyonce lives in is pretty crowded these days. There’s Mariah Carey, Ciara, Rihanna, Luckett and about a half-dozen others who have scored chart success since Beyonce’s last release. She says she can’t worry about that. When Destiny’s Child was pumping out the hits, the group became nearly ubiquitous on television and on the radio, which was good for the time. But now Beyonce says she will leave it to others to try to be all things to all people.

“At one point I felt like we were everywhere. I mean, we paid our dues, and there was a time when that was important to do, to try to get as big as possible.... I feel like now I can be picky in what I do. I can take time to do it right.”

At the video shoot in the Los Angeles Times’ corporate offices, the crew clapped when Beyonce finished her smoldering performance and a few shook their heads, marveling at her intensity. They didn’t know that it was the restraint of stepping into a movie role that had set the stage for a newly impassioned pop star.

“In the movie I had to sing really soft and the thing is a little more contrived and not soulful ... whenever I would go into the studio, back when we were prerecording the music, the director kept saying don’t growl, don’t belt out notes, don’t sing so high, don’t go on any runs. I felt like I needed to release all of that. That’s why I was screaming the song. I couldn’t have that passion for so long.” She laughed. “It felt good.”

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geoff.boucher@latimes.com