Cheetah Girl Adrienne Bailon is on a fast career track
Tuesday, July 29th 2008, 4:00 AM
But fate intervened, and now she's delivering hits for the Disney company and building on an acting career that includes a part in the film "The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2."
"I wanted to help people," Bailon told the Daily News. "I wanted to be an obstetrician."
She's still helping, just in a different way.
That's because as part of the Cheetah Girls, which started as a movie on the Disney Channel and has spun off CDs and a concert tour, she often visits children in hospitals.
Bailon is in Cheetah mode now. The third film, "The Cheetah Girls One World," airs Aug. 22 at 8 p.m. The film was shot in India, requiring the cast (including co-Cheetahs Kiely Williams and Sabrina Bryan) and crew to spend weeks in the country adapting to the culture.
"It was a dream come true," Bailon says. "I love traveling. We're such adventurous girls in real life. It was such a cool adventure."
Cool, and very far away from where she expected to be at this point in her life.
She got her first break at 14 - she's now 24 - when she was practicing with her church choir at Madison Square Garden. Ricky Martin, preparing for his own Garden show, stopped by. He needed a choir for his gig, and after an audition she was one of a few asked to back him up. When it was over, she returned to her studies at the High School for Health Professions and Human Services.
A year later, while interning at Beth Israel Hospital, she crossed paths with a producer with a broken leg who was putting together a singing group. He gave her his card and invited her to an audition. She went - with her father, she stresses - and got the job, which ended up being the girl group 3LW.
Goodbye medical career, hello Hollywood.
Working with 3LW eventually led to the first "Cheetah Girls" movie for Disney in 2003. Then came parts in other shows, and two other "Cheetah" films.
Though she spends loads of time on the road, Bailon gets back to New York often. Her parents have since moved upstate, but continue to work in the city. Her mother is in accounting at Weill Cornell Medical Center and her father is a building code inspector.
Bailon realizes she has had a couple of lucky breaks along the way. But had she not hit it big in Tinseltown, she never would have stopped performing.
"I would be a singing obstetrician. I'd sing my babies out," she says. "I'm a people person. I would still be in the medical field. I love to help people out."
0 comments:
Post a Comment