Carrie Underwood Isn’t Satisfied With Grammys, Aims For Oscar With A Film Role

She scored a guest spot on How I Met Your Mother and made us cry with her performance in her latest music video, but that was just the beginning of Carrie Underwood’s acting career. The country singer has landed her first movie role in the biopic Soul Surfer, which tells the story of 19-year old Bethany Hamilton, who lost her arm in a shark attack but continued riding the waves less than a month later. No, Carrie won’t be armless—she’ll play the church youth leader in the film (which also stars Dennis Quaid and Helen Hunt). Is Carrie going to be one of the few Idol alum with a successful film career?

Other Idols have had various degrees of success on the big-screen. Obviously, Jennifer Hudson is at the top of the heap by winning an Oscar for Dreamgirls, and no other AI alum has come close to that level of respect in the film industry. Katherine McPhee had a bit part in The House Bunny and she seems to be making some headway with her acting career, landing a role in an upcoming Rob Schneider vehicle. Justin Guarini and Kelly Clarkson didn’t have much luck with From Justin To Kelly (and thankfully, Idol producers never tried to make any finalists appear on the big-screen together since). As far as TV movies go, Kevin Covais (aka Season 5’s “Chicken Little”) was in Labor Pains with Lindsay Lohan, and Fantasia played herself in a Lifetime movie (after losing out to Hudson for that dream role in Dreamgirls).

Let’s hope Carrie’s acting efforts in Soul Surfer land her on our next list of Pop Stars Who Can Actually Act. We’d hate to see her pretty face wind up here instead.