In last year’s hit film “Hairspray,” her character was “big, blond and beautiful.”

The blond is long gone and, in signing on as the new celebrity face of Jenny Craig, actress/singer Queen Latifah wants to work on the “big.” As part of the First Steps campaign, Latifah hopes to lose 5 percent to 10 percent of her body weight and keep it off.

“For me, it’s not about a body image thing. I feel pretty confident,” the 37-year-old star of “Mad Money” said at a recent press conference for Jenny Craig. “I do realize I’m a role model to a lot of people, and I’ve been a role model for confidence. I feel being a healthier person is a good thing. If I can set the example for confidence on the inside, why not set it for confidence on the outside as well?”

The campaign’s message, according to company and medical officials, is not one of drastic “I lost-100-pounds-in-six-months” alterations, routinely screamed by the tabloids. Shedding 5 percent to 10 percent of one’s body weight significantly reduces an overweight person’s risk of diabetes, heart disease or other related ailments.

“There’s good medical data that a modest weight loss has huge health benefits,” says Dr. Francine Kaufman, head of the Center for Diabetes, Endocrinology and Metabolism at Childrens Hospital Los Angeles. “This is a relatively new message. Jenny Craig has always been centered on getting the right portion size and the nutrient quality of the foods. We’re all starting to realize more and more how a healthy lifestyle promotes a healthy outcome.”

In addition, most people consider modest weight loss a manageable goal, says Dr. Ken Fujioka, director of the Center for Weight Management at Scripps Clinic and Scripps Green Hospital in San Diego.

“You don’t have to be thin. You don’t have to be a normal weight,” says Fujioka. “Losing more than 10 percent of your body weight is actually very difficult. Your body fights it.”

This approach fits Latifah just fine.

“I do not want to get skinny,” the actress, born Dana Owens, says. “I do not necessarily need to fit into a bikini. But a tankini could work.”

In joining what she calls “the JC crew,” Latifah follows in the slimming-down footsteps of actresses Kirstie Alley (who lost 75 pounds on the program) and Valerie Bertinelli (40 pounds).

Unlike those other two actresses, however, Latifah was already a plus-size performer when she became famous, first as a hip-hop artist and later in films. She has long professed herself personally and professionally at ease with her curvy figure. Indeed, an October People magazine cover story trumpeted the actress as being “200 Pounds and Loving It!”

But Latifah says one of the letters replying to the People article set her to thinking.

“Someone else wrote, `As a role model, I think it would be great if Queen Latifah could really set the example of being healthy.’ It struck a chord with me,” Latifah says. “I said that maybe there’s something to that. Maybe I should think about that. Maybe I could be that person.”

Latifah announced her support of Jenny Craig during her Trav’lin Light Tour in October but didn’t formally join the program at the time. Preparing to shoot the film “The Secret Life of Bees” in North Carolina, Latifah expects the Jenny Craig requirements to be easy to follow, and hopes to reach her weight goal in four to six weeks.

And then?

“Then I’ll maintain it, maybe even lose more,” she says. “It depends on how I feel. Sometimes you get excited. You want to go even further.”

R&B singer Alicia Keys is enjoying a successful worldwide tour, a chart-topping album and will act in an upcoming movie, but it might not have happened, she said, were it not for a near breakdown two years ago.

Keys, whose current hits include “No One,” is in the middle of her “As I Am” tour. The new “As I Am” album debuted on record charts at No. 1 and has sold over 3 million copies.

In October, she will appear in feature film, “The Secret Life of Bees,” starring Queen Latifah and Jennifer Hudson. Based on the best-selling novel of the same name, the movie is co-produced by Will Smith and backed by indie powerhouse Fox Searchlight.

While Keys seems to lead a charmed life and has the sort of career that most other 26-year-olds could barely imagine, it hasn’t always been so rosy.

Two years ago, the singer went through a troubled period that nearly derailed her life and career. A workaholic lifestyle and the death of a close relative from cancer pushed her “very close” to the breaking point, she admits.

Instead of having a public meltdown, Keys faced her demons in private.

“I knew I needed time away, so I went to Egypt for a month — on my own, which gave it a whole different perspective,” she told Reuters in a recent interview.

“It allowed me to see things I’d never seen before — all the temples on the Nile, the Pyramids, the history. It was so rich and beautiful and strong, and it inspired me so much, and renewed me.”

TIME TO REFLECT

Keys said she felt like it was important to be alone so she could reflect on her thoughts and examine her life, away from the media spotlight. She also cut back her work schedule.

“I’m definitely a workaholic in some ways, although less than I was before,” she said.

Ultimately, she said, the near-breakdown brought about an artistic breakthrough that helped shape the music on her third album and her edgier stage persona.

Billboard magazine, in its review of “As I Am,” said Keys “takes a step closer toward the soul revival popularized by John Legend, with full band arrangements and bright horn hooks, only occasionally falling back into the piano/melisma combination that drove the singles off her first two albums.”

Keys has always prided herself on being in control of her career and music, producing her records and writing songs, but ironically, she was able to push herself more on the new album by giving up some of that control, she said.

“I purposely didn’t have such a kind of controlling approach about it and I allowed the music to flow,” she said. “I’ve come more into my own, and really, with experience comes confidence and a little bit more of awareness of how I would like to do it, having learned from the past.”

She added that she is anxious to experiment even more and wants to work with rock acts like the White Stripes, Green Day, U2 or Coldplay.

“Things that are not quite of the same world, or so you think,” she said, “but when you put them together it’s just really interesting.”