AVRIL PUSHES THE ACTING AGAIN

You can't open a window round here without Avril Lavigne riding past announcing, and then re-announcing her plans to be a singer and an actor. Although the music career seems to have stalled and the acting... well, that's not quite as solid as it might sound:

In echoes of what Barbara Streisand and Bette Midler have done, Avril, 21, has three movies coming up – Over The Hedge with Bruce Willis, Fast Food Nation with Patricia Arquette and The Flock with Richard Gere.

Over The Hedge and Fast Food Nation have been premiered at Cannes this week.

She said: "I want to focus on both singing and acting.

"I’d love to go further. I think it’s important for me to do it the right way and be smart about it and wait for the right parts in the right movies.

"I want to start off small and warm up. I wouldn’t want to just throw myself into a big part. Over The Hedge was a great first film."

What this report doesn't seem to have noticed is that Over The Hedge may or may not be a "great first film", but it's a cartoon; and not really a very good one (Dreamworks. Need we say more?)

And while her appearance in Fast Food Nation is interesting, it's a very small part in a film which has delighted moviegoers in the same way a burger bar would please a foodie. (But of course, "I wouldn't want to throw myself into a big part.")

The real question, of course, is how Lavigne can simultaneously premiere in one movie which is stridently anti-fast food and poor diet, and in one which is being promoted in the US by Wal-Mart funded cartoons of squirrels driving giant hot dogs around and, erm, special Wendys burgers.

music avril lavigne fast food nation over the hedge