In the new musical Burlesque, opening over the Thanksgiving holiday, Cam Gigandet portrays Jack, the confidante of small-town girl Ali Rose (Christina Aguilera), who has come to the big city in the pursuit of her dream to be a singing star. A fellow musician, Jack is shy about his own songwriting as he encourages Ali to take her rightful place on the stage.

The two have an undeniable and playful chemistry, that allowed them to have fun both on screen and off, even for their more intimate moments. During a recent interview at the film’s press day, the Twilight star talked about meeting and working with Cher and Christina Aguilera, doing on screen nudity and surviving L.A. when he first moved to town. Check out what he had to say after the jump:

Cher has had a film career, but Christina Aguilera hasn’t. What was it like working on dramatic scenes with her?

GIGANDET: She has such an amazing work ethic that, if she was on set and there to work, whatever scene it was, she was fully there. She was open to learn. There was no ego surrounding her, as a music artist, when she came on the set to be an actress, so it was such a pleasure to work with her because I was able to watch someone figuring things out for the first time, finding their own process and figuring their way through how they work themselves. She learned things so fast. And to be able to help in whatever way I possibly could it made it cool to say I was working with Christina Aguilera on her first role.

Did you audition with her?

GIGANDET: No, I didn’t. I was working on another movie at Screen Gems at that time, called Priest. I was all dirty in a leather cowboy outfit, killing vampires, and then I’d go straight over to the Burlesque stage and listen to Christina Aguilera songs that were just blaring. At that moment, I was like, “All right, I have to be a part of this movie.” It was such a complete reversal of roles. Fortunately, they enjoyed what I had done on Priest enough to give me this job.

How was it to do the nudity in this film? Was that fun?

GIGANDET: You can’t get out of it. It’s your job. It’s what you have to do, so why not have fun with it? I think it’s so strange when people say that it was so difficult and so hard. It’s a perk of your job, really. I got to kiss Christina Aguilera, which is not a bad thing. We didn’t know what that scene was going to actually going to end up as. Whatever felt natural, at that exact time, was what we ended up going with. It was a collaborative decision-making process.

Source: Collider.com