Now Paltrow's singing Pop's song

My father, Bruce, who directed Duets, did a karaoke theme episode in a television series about seven years ago, and was later sent a screenplay for a sort of road-trip film about six people on the karaoke circuit. He showed me the script and I thought it was original and fresh - the karaoke subculture hasn't been done on film.

I play an innocent third-generation Las Vegas showgirl who discovers, after the death of her mother, played by Angie Dickinson, that her unknown father, played by Huey Lewis, is a karaoke hustler.

Researching it in Western bars and college bars and Asian bars and inner-city bars, even airport bars, we got captured by the subject and, after quite a struggle - because it's neither a musical nor a road picture - my dad got $12.5 million together and we shot it in Vancouver.

I've sung all my life so I was keen to do my own singing. As a kid I usually sang with my mother [actress Blythe Danner]. Her parents were singers - her dad was a banker who became an operatic tenor and with his wife sung in choirs and churches. My mother and I always sang together on stage and in cabaret. Aged six, I remember I sang 'Anything You Can Do, I Can Do Better' at a post-play cabaret with Christian Slater. Later I graduated to high-school groups.

But I never expected the 'Cruisin' duet that Huey and I sing in the film to make it to radio. It's had loads of air-play and just reached Number One in the contemporary adult charts, which I'm told is your version of Radio 2.