Who's That With Andre?

By Rebecca Winters

With a movie called Be Cool, the cast had better, well, be cool. In next year's sequel to the 1995 Mob flick Get Shorty, chill rapper ANDRE 3000 (real identity: Andre Benjamin) and Bill killer UMA THURMAN (real identity: foxy movie-star mama) supply the requisite edge. Andre, the sex-symbol half of the Grammy-winning hip-hop duo OutKast, plays Dabu "a trigger-happy parody of all rappers," he says. "He's a dude from the street, and he's kind of crazy. He'll be in a normal conversation just itching to shoot somebody." Thurman's Edie runs a record label that's in debt to Dabu, but she's being protected by boyfriend and entrepreneurial mobster Chili Palmer (John Travolta). This is the first meaty film role for Andre, who had a bit part in last year's Hollywood Homicide. He is next set to play Jimi Hendrix in a biopic. "Once you're an entertainer, you pretty much sell your real life," says Andre. "In movies, you can actually play a real person." And we thought only audiences escaped in the cinema.