Was Selena Gomez trying to get rid of her Disney star image with Spring Breakers?

By: Izumi Hasegawa   March 22, 2013

Disney starlets Selena Gomez and Vanessa Hudgens played bad girls for a change in Spring Breakers. Did they have a plan in mind when signing on to this project? Selena answered:

I definitely don’t think it’s us trashing or us shedding, trying to shed an image. I think I can speak for Vanessa when I say we are super passionate about what we do. And at the end of the day, we’re entertainers, we’re actors. And to have the opportunity to work with someone like Harmony (Korine, director) and James (Franco), it’s just basically a given. So in a way it was a way for us to kind of step out of, of course, what we’re kind of known for in a way. But to do something like this was more of an experience that we were really excited about and proud of.

This project is quite different from her former roles, but Selena wanted to do this very much.

I wasn’t scared. I definitely wanted to do this. I thought it would be a great opportunity for me. And Harmony explained the movie, I think, perfectly, and that’s the reason why — getting to actually know Harmony and the way he makes films. I mean, he said all of these things to me when I was auditioning. He told me, he was like, “Are you ready to kind of leave your lifestyle behind a little bit and just kind of come on this journey with me?” That’s just like the most exciting thing in the world. So I didn’t really know what I was getting myself into. But while we were there, it was incredible to create and to play. And it was liberating more than frightening.