What was Beyoncé’s first acting film, a 2001 musical adaptation made for television?

Beyoncé’s first acting film was Carmen: A Hip Hopera.

The 2001 film was a contemporary musical adaptation of Georges Bizet’s opera Carmen, produced for MTV. Beyoncé played Carmen Brown, a character modeled on the opera’s central figure. The production relocated the story from nineteenth-century Spain to a modern American setting.

Carmen: A Hip Hopera combined opera’s basic dramatic framework with hip-hop, R&B, and spoken dialogue. Robert Townsend directed the film, and Mekhi Phifer played Hill, the role corresponding broadly to Don José.

Beyoncé later became more widely known for theatrical films such as Austin Powers in Goldmember, The Fighting Temptations, Dreamgirls, and Cadillac Records. That later filmography can make Dreamgirls seem like her first movie, but Carmen: A Hip Hopera came earlier.