South African actress brings music to 'Angel Camouflaged'

That singular screen quality, presence, will not be a problem.

The energy of being vividly "in the moment" flows from Dilana Robichaux, a striking, now dreadlocked rock singer taking her first bow as a leading lady in writer-director Michael Givens' independent feature, "Angel Camouflaged."

On a balmy, breezy afternoon at Bowen's Island, where the crew has redressed the old dock restaurant as a Florida Keys bar called Kokonuts, Robichaux takes a moment between a siesta and makeup to talk about her good fortune, her talented collaborators and the task at hand.

Like most musicians, Robichaux is a nocturnal creature, and early morning calls to the set have been one of her bigger adjustments.

But the principal challenge for the native South African, a stateside resident for nine years, has been moving from the continuity of live performance on stage to the discontinuity of motion picture production, where scenes generally are shot out of sequence.

"Initially, I was surprised when my then-manager was approached about me being in a film," says Robichaux, who had wowed Givens and producer Kenneth Dalton with her appearances on the CBS reality show "Rock Star: Supernova."

"It's so different working on a movie. Singing is easy for me. I'm really in control because it's my stage, my show. So I was nervous about it, but I became very interested after meeting Michael Givens.

"You can put $100,000 in front of me, and if I don't like you, I'll not take your money. I've always been very proud of my integrity as far as just following my gut feeling, staying real, staying me and doing what I have a passion for."

Givens knew from the moment Dalton brought up her name that they had found their star.

"We loved her," says the director, a Beaufort resident and protege of celebrated filmmaker Ridley Scott. "We rewrote the original comic screenplay I'd been given to make it edgier and more about the girl.

Now it's what I like to call a musical drama."

Robichaux, well-accustomed to the convolutions of the rock life, comes to the role with an innate understanding of her character. She ran away from home at 15 to join a traveling band. "And I haven't stopped since."

She recorded her first album, "Wonderfool" in 2000, which led to four music videos, five singles, hundreds of performance gigs and the title tracks for two movies.

In "Angel," Robichaux stars as Scottie, a disillusioned singer who inherits a rundown bar and, with her somewhat less-than-reliable brother, Morgan (Warrick Grier), labors to revive the ramshackle tavern and rekindle her passion for music. The course of restoration will take some wholly unexpected and revelatory turns.

Co-starring are fellow South African Grier ("The Scorpion King: Rise of a Warrior"), Carlos Bernard (TV's "24"), Terry Serpico ("Army Wives") and veteran leading actor James Brolin as Salt, a grizzled Keys denizen who had been trying to keep the bar afloat.

A chief inducement for Robichaux was the chance to perform her own music.

"That was my first request. It would have been the deal-breaker had they said no. But Michael and Kenny loved my music and were very excited about that. So from there, we started working on the script."

As a child, Robichaux dreamed of being an actress, at one point going to drama school.

Yet the inactivity between takes has been a challenge for Robichaux, who describes herself as "hyper."

"That has been the hardest thing. I want to go, go, go all the time. Even when I'm home, I'm writing or recording or making bookings, doing promotion. I have no manager now; I do everything. Here, I'm so excited every morning when I prepare to come on set and shoot. You're here by 5 a.m., rush into makeup, then two hours later you're, 'OK, let's go, let's go,' but you have to wait another 20 minutes. It's getting easier, and I'm gradually learning things about the process: camera angles, the size of the lens, how experienced actors ask questions.

"Filmmaking is definitely something I can relate to. There are many similarities to being on the stage. And I'd like to make more movies. But I just want to live each moment and not be a fortune teller. I will do this movie, stay realistic and grounded, and see what happens next."

What happens next for Givens, also a skilled cinematographer with 20 years behind the camera, is letting his characters tell the story.

"I do my best not to allow my (visual sense) to interfere with the actors' storytelling, which is the most important thing, but I still need to make it look good," Givens says. "Working for Ridley as much as I did was instrumental. If he had been around before there was film, he would have been a painter. There's not a job on the set he couldn't do.

"You absorb a great deal shooting for the best."

For a profile of actor James Brolin, see Thursday's Preview section.

Reach Bill Thompson at bthompson@postandcourier.com or 937-5707.