Selena Gomez has been a star since she was a kid, but evidently that bit of news had escaped the director of her acclaimed new movie Emilia Pérez.

Speaking to Variety, Selena confirmed that Jacques Audiard, the director, approached her for the part because he had seen her in the 2012 film Spring Breakers, but didn’t know anything else about her. Selena tells Variety, “I thought it was really refreshing, and it made me feel like I earned the part.”

In the film, Selena plays the wife of a Mexican cartel leader. The leader asks a lawyer to help him fake his death so he can undergo gender-reaffirming surgery without his wife finding out. The role required her not only to act and sing, but to do so mostly in Spanish, which she’s not fluent in.

“I really did my best in my audition, and I hadn’t heard anything, so I really didn’t think that I would get it,” Selena said. “When I did, I felt like I needed to let go of everything, so I stopped working on my music and anything else, and solely focused on this.”

“It was still a little daunting to go into a space where I didn’t speak the same language as the director [French] and I wasn’t fluent in Spanish. Every day I’d wake up and rehearse the lines over and over again. And I’d call, in the middle of the night, my Spanish teacher. That part was probably the most daunting, but it was also fun.”

Meanwhile, Selena is Emmy nominated for her role in Only Murders in the Building, which has just been renewed for season 5 at Hulu.

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