By REED TUCKER
February 25, 2007
STARRING in a hit film and collecting a truckload of award nominations are nice and all, but the moment you know you’ve really become a star is when Brad Pitt mistakes someone else famous for you.
After all, if you’re on Brad Pitt’s radar - and he’s not trying to adopt you, that is - you know you’ve officially made it in Hollywood.
And in the past few months, no one has ascended quite as quickly and unpredictably as Jennifer Hudson. (You might have read an article or two about her somewhere.) The 25-year-old “Dreamgirls” star has emerged with the most compelling story at tonight’s Oscars, and it’s unlikely anyone will mistake the “Extra” host Tanika Ray for her ever again, as Mr. Jolie did at the Golden Globes.
Since Hudson’s appearance on Oprah’s show some 100 days ago to shill the Bill Condon-directed musical, her life has changed dramatically. Almost nothing is the same for her, in any part of her life.
Where once she drove a beat-up Buick Riviera, she now arrives at awards shows in a chauffeured Rolls-Royce. For just cruising around town, she’s considering buying a Lexus.
When all the “Dreamgirls” madness started, Hudson, incredibly, still lived with her mother, Darnell, in a modest two-story house in Chicago with a bent, chain-link fence separating it from the vacant lot next door.
Recently, however, she bought a four-bedroom condo in the city’s Hyde Park, a neighborhood that was once home to other local heroes, including Clarence Darrow and Barack Obama.
She used to respond personally to her fans on MySpace. Now’s she got more friends than Paris Hilton has nudie videos - 56,000 - and writing to all of them has become impossible. Her knowledge of geography has also broadened. A couple months ago, she didn’t even know what Cannes was. She told the Chicago Tribune with her usual mix of down-home charm and modesty, “Honey, when they told me I was going to Cannes, France [for a ‘Dreamgirls’ event], I thought they were giving Canada a nickname. I was like, ‘I’m sorry, Canada, you mean?’ They’re like, ‘No, Cannes, France.’ I was like, ‘What is that?’ ”
Now she’s busy jetting around the world to promote the film, including stays in London and Tokyo earlier this year.
She’s attended awards galas, walked the red carpet at premieres, appeared on TV shows, given dozens of interviews and become just the third black woman to land on the cover of Vogue. Not bad for someone’s whose only nonshowbiz work experience was a disaster of a stint at a Chicago Burger King.
“I can’t believe I get to be considered a celebrity now,” Hudson told the Orange County Register back in December, as she reclined in the luxurious Four Seasons hotel in Los Angeles. “It seems so strange.”
And although Hudson may not feel like a different person, she certainly looks like one. But then, that’s what a new entourage of personal trainers, stylists and makeup artists will do for a lady.
Her clothes have certainly taken a turn for stylish since she was photographed recording a demo a couple years ago wearing an ugly denim outfit.
