Sotto Voce Minnie

By Rebecca Winters

She may play a nightmare diva in December's Phantom of the Opera movie, but busy Brit MINNIE DRIVER is grounded enough to know her budding music career hasn't prepared her to deliver pop arias. Driver, whose first album, a "super-lo-fi, Cowboy Junkies kind of thing," is due in October, doesn't sing in the film version of the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical. "It would have been ridiculously arrogant to believe I could pull it off without a lifetime of training," says the Good Will Hunting star, who appears with Gerard Butler as the Phantom. Besides, the role of Carlotta provides other outlets for Driver's pipes. "I do a lot of babbling and screaming in Italian," she says. "I enjoyed that quite a bit."