Grammy-nominated singer Andra Day had never starred in a movie before she channeled Billie Holiday in a new biopic directed by Lee Daniels.<br /><br />In “The United States Vs. Billie Holiday,” Day plays the iconic jazz singer as she’s being targeted by a government investigation in the final years of her life.<br /><br />To fully inhabit the legend, Day prepared extensively for the role, as she told Leslie Odom Jr. in Variety’s Actors on Actors, presented by Amazon Studios. (Odom Jr. also portrays a musical trailblazer — Sam Cooke — in Regina King’s “One Night in Miami.”)<br /><br />“I basically abused my body for a long time,” Day says. “I’m joking and not really joking. I got the role at the very top of 2018. Reading everything I could get my hands on. Listening to every interview. Apparently, I exhausted the internet of Billie Holiday photos. Apparently, the internet will tell you that you’ve reached the end.”
