Chan Marshall licks the snow off a random car parked nearby. Fresh layers of ice and flurries cover the streets of Brooklyn (where we did the photo shoot for this story), giving the day an especially wintry feel. "Mmm, it tastes so good," says Marshall, dipping and rolling her tongue like a deer drawing in water from a creek. "Like acid rain!" Most people who know the name Chan Marshall know that she is the one-woman powerhouse behind Cat Power. But today, Chan (pronounced "Shawn") Marshall is an actress who was up until 5 a.m., shooting a scene for her first role in a major movie, My Blueberry Nights, directed by auteur-prince Wong Kar-wai. She's also a giddy girl who got to kiss Jude Law, unscripted. (In the film, Marshall plays Law's Russian-born ex-girlfriend). "How was it?" I ask, about the kiss. She responds with a dreamy roll of the eyes, and we both laugh, because, as any girl will tell you, to say how it was in actual words is to diminish how it really was. And for Marshall, it's a well-deserved moment to savor unsaid.
Marshall, known in the past for her raw, stunning and occasionally maddening stage antics, survived some turbulent times before landing safely on the SoHo set of a Hollywood-backed movie. Born and raised in rural Georgia, Marshall was shuffled between divorced parents throughout her childhood, constantly transitioning to new homes all over the South. She says she spent most of her adolescence feeling emotionally stunted and thinking she'd be lucky if she didn't end up as a homeless prostitute.
But lately, great things have been happening for Marshall. Really great things. People are falling in love first with her music and then very often with her. Offers and projects are piling up at a furious pace. Wong isn't the only one who was enchanted by Marshall's magnetism when first meeting her -- Karl Lagerfeld signed her as a Chanel girl after he saw her smoking a cigarette outside of the Mercer Hotel in New York. "I had just gotten a check for $7,400 for a song I did for Natalie Portman's movie V for Vendetta," Marshall recalls of the Lagerfeld encounter. "I went to Louis Vuitton and bought two suitcases, a bomber jacket and this beautiful white Pocahontas dress."
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