Rebecca St James nears end of filming for first movie

|PIC1|The full-length movie starring Christian songstress Rebecca St James in her first leading role is near the end of the filming process and needs only to shoot the remaining late winter scenes to wrap the project up.

“We've just finished the major part of ‘Sarah's Choice’ and only have the snow scenes at the end of the month in Ohio,” reported St James last week. “This crew's amazing!”

The faith-based movie, according to early production notes, stars St James as a single, successful young career woman who becomes faced with the unexpected news that she is pregnant and finds herself having to make a dramatic, life altering decision.

“We live in a very real world where scores of young women every day are being impacted by the heart wrenching issues and life changing choices that my character is suddenly forced to come face to face with,” says St James, a long-time advocate of abstinence. “I feel it’s an important film with a godly message that I am praying will profoundly touch lives.”

For much of last year, St James was notably missing from the music scene after she took an extended sabbatical following years of prominent success.

Last year, for the first time since Christianity Today magazine began rallying music lovers in 2003 behind their favorite artists for its annual Reader’s Choice Awards, St James was not voted Best Female Artist.

“[V]oters have crowned a new favorite Female Artist, reflecting the decrease in Rebecca St James' musical output, visibility, and radio airplay,” the popular evangelical magazine commented.

Instead, St James has been increasingly active in the book and film industries, putting out a bestselling book last year and fully getting engrossed in Hollywood over the past six months. Despite her new endeavours, however, the 31-year-old songstress doesn’t intend to give up on her music career and in fact gained fresh passion and inspiration over the course of her sabbatical.

“To the many of you who have been asking about new RSJ music in '09, the answer is ‘yes',” St. James’ publicists announced last November. “Rebecca is re-energised and re-ignited on the writing front and we can expect new original RSJ music in the '09 season!”

According to the Grammy winner’s publicists, St James will be busier than ever this year with plans to release new songs for several upcoming film soundtracks and plans to reprise her successful “mother/daughter” SHE events late next month, doing a short series of US dates before leaving for international concerts. In her native Australian homeland, St James will be the headlining artist at “EasterFest ’09”, an outdoor event expected to draw in excess of 10,000 concert-goers.

St James also plans to appear as an anchor artist on the telecast of the 40th Annual GMA Dove Awards, set to broadcast April 23 on The Gospel Music Channel.

“Often called the ‘hardest working artist in contemporary Christian music’, over her past decade of stellar career successes, Rebecca St James is today re-defining even her own definition of the term ‘busy',” her publicists boast.

Both a Grammy Award winner and the recipient of multiple Dove Awards, St James has produced seventeen Top 10 singles – nine of which have reached the No 1 spot on the charts to date – and garnered international success that has driven her record sales into the multi-millions globally.

St James’ last album, The Ultimate Collection, was released in March 2008, and was a retrospective collection of greatest hits and fan favourites. Prior to that, St James released aLIVE in Florida, her second live album in March 2007.