Source: BET Awards 2020 / Getty
It’s been 20 years since Beyoncé starred in Austin Powers in Goldmember alongside Mike Myers. Looking back, makeup artist Kate Briscoe remembered how Beyoncé stepped in and asked that the poster for the movie be done over. She made this costly request because she felt body was altered too much in the photo.
“She says, ‘You made me too skinny. It’s not me,'” Biscoe told Vulture. “Then she did this hourglass shape. And he said, ‘Okay, we’ll fix that.’ She walked away to go do the scene, and I looked at him and smiled, like, ‘Is that the first time that you’ve ever had an actress ask to make her body bigger?’ He was like, ‘Yes. It’s going to cost me thousands of dollars, but I am going to do it.’ ”
Director Jay Roach said that the “Break My Soul” singer’s mother Tina Knowles was super excited about her daughter’s role as Foxxy Cleopatra. She even offered some feedback about what the role should look like.
“We sat down with Beyoncé and her mom on the rooftop patio outside of Mike Myers’s room at the Chateau Marmont and talked about the possibilities for the character,” he said. “Her mom was very much into blaxploitation movies. She could tell that was the DNA for Foxxy. Her mom was so cool and so helpful and instantly had ideas for us.”
In 2002, Beyoncé told BBC that she drew inspiration from Pam Grier, who was one of the faces of blaxploitation films in the 1970s.
“My mom loved Pam Grier,” she said. “She loved Foxy Brown. I got a chance to meet her when I was 15 at the Source Awards. Before the movie, I watched every one of her films I could find. At the reading with Mike, I wouldn’t talk unless I was talking like her. She helped me tremendously. She’s who I based everything on.”
Beyoncé’s last role was in a remake of The LionKing where she was the voice of Nala.
