As for Jewel, she was looking to get into acting and casting director Avy Kaufman, seeking the right heroine for Lee's film, approached her team. As Lee said, he was unfamiliar with Jewel's work, so Kaufman sent him copies of her music videos, as well as footage of her as a teenager playing Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz.
Lee liked what he saw, but told the Pieces of You artist that she would have to take acting lessons for three months before he decided one way or another. She agreed.
Touring and taking lessons at the same time proved pretty stressful, so Lee recommended Jewel practice tai chi to help her remain centered. "All of a sudden I was famous and I had a stalker during that time and I was working with this brilliant director, who really intimidated me. The tai chi was just to get me settled," the singer told the San Francisco Chronicle in 1999.
For the first few weeks on set, "Jewel was pretty raw," said Ulrich, whose Jack Bull Chiles is the love interest of Jewel's Sue Lee Shelley, a young widow trying to hold it together on the home front and, later, care for Jack's baby. "She didn't know what was going on when it came to technique. She didn't even know what a mark was."
