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"    Photo: Getty Images   Whether you&amp;#039;re a fan of the 1976 original or 2006&amp;#039;s Dream Girls, you may think you&amp;#039;ve seen Sparkle before. In some ways, you have: the melodramatic musical, out today, is about an all-black trio in Detroit at the height of &amp;#039;60s Motown. The difference, however, is Carmen Ejogo, the 38-year-old actress. Her edgy portrayal of Sister, the eldest of three sisters\u2014whose overbearing mother (Whitney Houston) forbids them from pursuing a career in music after having failed miserably herself\u2014is riveting. When we caught up with Ejogo last night, the London-bred actress, who lives in Brooklyn with actor husband Jeffrey Wright and their two children, was in her hotel room gazing out the window at Hollywood&amp;#039;s Grauman&amp;#039;s Chinese Theater, where an oversize poster for Sparkle was on display in preparation     for the evening&amp;#039;s premiere. &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s pretty surreal,&amp;quot; she admitted of the spectacle, which makes perfect sense for an actress, who while having worked steadily since 1997&amp;#039;s Metro with Eddie Murphy, has remained largely under the radar. That buck stops here, however. Her Sister (the role made legend by Lonette McKee) is equal parts Michelle Pfeiffer in Scarface and Thandie Newton in Crash. Biting, forlorn, self-conscious, and sexy as hell, Ejogo&amp;#039;s Sister lifts what she aptly calls a &amp;quot;meta genre&amp;quot; flick into a launching pad for the cerebral actress, whose singing voice and on-screen charisma are outshined only by those miraculous cheekbones. ELLE: What about this remake will surprise fans of the original? Carmen Ejogo: At the core it&amp;#039;s still about the music. We use Curtis Mayfield&amp;#039;s original soundtrack, but also add some other musical components [Ed&amp;#039;s note: including a righteous cameo by Cee-Lo Green]. I think it&amp;#039;s for a bigger audience. When the original was made, it was a strange period for an all-black cast. Blacksploitation films were out there, but the industry was not supporting careers like that yet. I am very grateful to be a part of this little gem that didn&amp;#039;t get its fair share of recognition the first time around. ELLE: What drives your character, Sister? CE: She is the equivalent to the modern day celebrity, who is only famous for being a celebrity. She really is just trying to get out of Detroit and relies heavily on her sexuality. She is not that astute or aware of the social context she is living in. She is playing a persona she longs to be. She&amp;#039;s actually quite needy. ELLE: Are there parallels between you and Sister? CE: It&amp;#039;s as far away from me as it could be! I&amp;#039;ve stayed away from sexy roles. It&amp;#039;s never interested me. It&amp;#039;s all she knows how to be. She doesn&amp;#039;t have ambition and this reliance on sensuality is exactly what creates her spiral downward. There were certain real-life tragic sex symbols I had in mind: Marilyn Monroe, Tina Turner in the Ike and Tina days, and Amy Winehouse, who oscillated between being sexy and needy. ELLE: Whitney Houston&amp;#039;s role as a recovering mother seemed almost foreshadowing. How do you think audiences will react to her performance? CE: I think it&amp;#039;s important to realize that Whitney wanted to make this film. No one could predict what happened only a few months later. She was incredibly conscious of the parallels. There&amp;#039;s an honesty and a vulnerability to her performance. Great artists are the ones who have put their entire selves out there to be adored, humiliated, to be picked at, cherished, all of those things, and haven&amp;#039;t shied away from that.   "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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