Beyoncé: ‘Austin Powers’ Star Mike Myers Met Her Mother as Goldmember

Austin Powers in Goldmember gave Beyoncé her big break in movies. She was already a pop star with Destiny’s Child, but after Austin Powers, Beyoncé was an actor, too. She played Foxxy Cleopatra in the third movie. Austin (Mike Myers) travels back in time to the ’70s where Foxxy is his contact. 

Beyoncé said Myers would stay in character whether he was playing Austin, Dr. Evil or Goldmember. That made things tricky when her mother, Tina Knowles, visited her on the set. Here’s the story Beyoncé told at the film’s 2002 press junket.

Beyoncé met Mike Myers, then she met Austin Powers

For her first movie, Beyoncé said she rehearsed with Myers before filming began. 

“The first reading, I didn’t read anything,” she said. “I didn’t really say anything either, because I was so nervous. The second meeting was a reading, and I read the script for him and it was great. Once we started reading, I got more comfortable. I responded well and it was great chemistry.”

Once they were on the set, he was Austin Powers all day. 

“The first day I saw him, I was completely starstruck, because I had been doing the rehearsals with Mike Myers,” she said. “And then Austin Powers walks in. He really just became him. He’d had the accent and everything before. But I was like, ‘This is real. I’m really working on Austin Powers.’ That was the day I realized that I was doing Austin Powers.”

Beyoncé’s Mother met Goldmember 

Tina joined Beyoncé for those early readings and got along with the director.

“It was Jay Roach, Mike and my mom talking,” she said. I was just sitting there.”

In the third film, Dr. Evil conspires with another villain, Goldmember, both played by Myers. When Beyoncé’s mother visited her, it was on a Goldmember day.

“My mom walked in and he hadn’t seen her,” she said. “He only met her once and he was dressed as Goldmember. And he did not change his accent. And my mom was like, ‘Wow, that is incredible.’ It was, completely. He asked for water in the accent. He talks to everyone in the accent.”

Goldmember was a Dutch villain obsessed with gold and eating his own dead skin. Myers even spoke Dutch.

“He said some Amsterdam greeting or something,” she said. “I don’t know, some crazy thing. She was like, ‘Huh? OK.’”

Fat Bastard was real, too

Myers also invented the henchman character Fat Bastard in the second film, Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me. Fat Bastard returned in Goldmember, and Beyoncé said the fat suit looked even more real in person.

“On the screen it looks crazy,” she said. “In person it looks so real, and his stomach is there and the hair and the water. And the way he acts, he’s just so dirty, like, he’s just flirtatious and a dirty, freaky man.”