Her group, Destiny's Child, has sold 28 million records, she stars in the new Austin Powers movie - and she's still only 20. Donald Clarke gets up close and 'bootylicious' with Beyoncé Knowles
'I don't think you're ready for this jelly," Destiny's Child warned us on their magnificently sleazy single, Bootylicious. Now, in so far as this meant anything, it was an assertion of the Houston trio's fearsome powers of sexual intimidation. They may bang on about God and family, but the group's popularity rests on its celebration of carnal assertiveness. Or, as lead singer and songwriter Beyoncé Knowles put it so pithily on that 2001 hit: "My body's too bootylicious for ya babe." Well, quite.
So who is this bubbly youth sitting before us in her floppy hat and thrift-store blouse? Knowles is talking to a small group of journalists in a London hotel to help promote her role as Blaxploitation ass-kicker Foxxy Cleopatra in the new Austin Powers film. Before she came in, we weren't at all sure we were ready for her jelly.
Knowles sympathises: "It is difficult, because on stage I'm so confident. And now there's Foxxy, it's going to get harder. I've been out with a few guys who weren't celebrities and they were so scared. I felt uncomfortable for them, because they just didn't know what to do. She's so independent, should I open doors for her? Should I pay for stuff? They thought that I'd be mad if they treated me like a regular girl, but that's what I am."
Having sold 28 million records, it's debatable just how "regular" Knowles is. But, at 20, she can certainly get away with calling herself a girl. Unadorned by make-up, her features appear finer, less bold than they do in publicity shots, and one can just about credit that she was born in 1981. Yet, her self-confidence possesses the room. Does she feel twice as old as the average 20-year-old? "Yes!" she says. "But I get along with anybody. I mean, you look at this movie, this is the first time I've spent any amount of time among older people. But if you put me with young kids, with hip-hop people, with whatever, I can adjust. If you put me with 20-year-olds, I can still go to that place. I mean, I am still young. It's important to relate to people that age. If you don't, how are you going to write songs for them?"
It is no wonder that Beyoncé feels so elderly. Her father, Mathew Knowles, put the band together as long ago as 1990. Destiny's Child hauled their booties all round the US, before being signed by Columbia Records in 1996. Four years later, they had clocked-up two hit albums and were the most successful R 'n' B act in the world.
Exactly what happened next is in dispute, but half of the four-piece swanned-off amidst a flurry of lawsuits and accusations about the influence of Daddy Knowles.
"We worked very hard," she says. "It happened slow. I'm happy the way it happened. I'm happy we lost on [TV talent show] Star Search. I'm happy we lost two members. I'm happy about all the flack we got. Everything bad that happened, I'm happy about.
"I know how easily it can be taken away. It made me appreciate it. It's made me grow. I'm 20, but I have an old soul."
There is a frightening amount of belief in her voice. Yet it's hard to argue with the facts. Reforming as a three-piece for the appropriately named Survivor album, the band found themselves more popular than ever.
And now comes Austin Powers in Goldmember: a humorous title for a film full of equally amusingly-named characters, not least Foxxy Cleopatra. Sadly, the dramatis personae is the most chortlesome thing about this tired concoction. But no blame should be attached to Knowles who, though appearing in her first film, is effortlessly natural in an underwritten role.
As the film's director, Jay Roach, said earlier: "She comes across like she's been doing this forever. John Lyons suggested her. I'd heard of Destiny's Child, but I didn't really know who she was. I wanted a real actress; I didn't want to just use stunt casting. When she finally came in and read, she just blew everybody away. She is going to be another Jennifer Lopez, another Cameron Diaz."
Knowles dug Foxxy's 1970s threads. "Yeh. It was great to wear the lashes and the shoes," she says. "For someone who loves fashion, it was heaven. I love the 1970s. And it was great to know how that all felt. Every day putting on those lashes, I had a whole new respect for my Mom. How did she do that every day? Every time I sat down, my Afro went flat. How did y'all sleep at night with that? I tried to find myself in Foxxy. I tried to identify with her. Like the way she is stood-up by Austin."
Does Beyoncé Knowles knows what it's like to be stood up? "Oh yes! Bay-Bee," she sing-songs. "My first boyfriend - we're still friends - he stood me up plenty of times. That's why we broke up."
During her scenes with Mike Myers's groovy secret agent, she had a real battle retaining her composure. "Oh yeh, not laughing is the hardest thing in the world," she says. "The whole time he's talking, I'm saying to myself: he's not funny, he's not funny. Waiting for him to stop talking, so I could say my line. Then later I relaxed a bit. But I relaxed a bit too much and couldn't stop laughing."
I'm not sure I believe her. She seems so grounded in person and so assured on screen, that I can't imagine her giving in to even a passing unprofessional impulse. That assuredness will bring plenty of movie offers her way. Goldmember may be an Austin Powers movie too far, but it is sure to make a bucket of money nonetheless.
With a cracking solo track on the soundtrack - the Sly Stone-influenced Work it Out - is Knowles using this as an opportunity to assert an identity outside Destiny's Child?
"We are not as strong individually as we are as a group," she says. "Imagine winning a Grammy, but winning it with two people you love. It's three times the joy. It's beautiful being in a group, but it's also important to do things on your own.
"When I first moved into my own house, which was during this movie, every time I went grocery shopping I didn't know what to get. I was going to get whatever the group got."
Like being in the Monkees?
"Yeh, exactly. You're just so used to it. I didn't put the TV on because I didn't know what to watch."
Everyone hoots at this anecdote, but it is actually rather poignant. Knowles has missed out on so many of the mundane things that shape a personality. How could it be otherwise when she has spent her entire life chasing fame. Earlier, she told a story about her first meeting with fellow Texan Verne Troyer, who plays the diminutive Mini Me in the Austin Powers movies.
"We were about 12 or 13 and trying to get a record deal. We were travelling on this cheap airline to get to LA. We had to fly to 12 different places before we got there, because that's the only flight we could afford. And Verne was on that flight.
"Everybody was saying: 'You all look like you're in a group'. So we said: 'Yeh we're off to get a record deal'. They asked us to sing something and our dad is like: Go sing, go sing! They brought us up to the front and we sang Amazing Grace over the speakers."
Being a pathologically joyless person, all this suggests to me is lost childhood. Has Beyoncé ever longed for a normal life?
"Certain moments I think that," she says. "I think: Why, why, why? I see other people and I think: would I have been happier with that? But I would die if I didn't perform. I can't imagine what life would have been like. I mean, I've been in Destiny's Child since I was nine. I can't fathom the thought.
"I actually - this sounds crazy - have thought about becoming an art teacher. I'm still 20 and the thought of school is like punishment. But as you get older you want to learn."
Beyoncé Knowles really is an extraordinary piece of work. She plays the eight hacks with the same grandstanding aplomb she must use on a packed Madison Square Garden. Yet at the close, she chats about clothes to an English journalist as if they both were teenagers at a disco. I remember something she said about Michael Caine, who plays Austin's father.
"I was very scared, just thinking about the 140 movies he's done. And they were saying all these technical words and stuff. But I really felt that I could ask him. He taught me all that stuff. When he left I wanted to cry.
"He taught me you can be successful, make that many movies and still be nice. There is no excuse to be a butthole!"
Austin Powers in Goldmember is released next Friday