In The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, Seu Jorge is a strange figure in a strange movie: A rail thin, dreadlocked man who keeps popping up to strum David Bowie songs in Portuguese on the guitar, one of a crew of misfits on a Cousteau-like expedition in a surreal satire led by Bill Murray.

Dreamily intoning songs such as Life on Mars, Jorge seems like a figure from another world.

Which he is. The man who one British paper said should be nominated as the coolest guy on the planet grew up in brutal slum outside Rio de Janeiro. After his brother was murdered in a battle with a rival gang, the family ended up on the street, and old Jorge spent several years homeless.

"Because the gangs try to reduce any form of retribution by the family, they break them up and make them homeless to reduce their power," Jorge said by e-mail. "I lost weight, got addicted and did not sleep. When you are on the streets, the gangs try and bum you when you are sleeping so you don't sleep for long!"

He found emotional and literal refuge in music and acting. He began sleeping outside a theater because it was relatively safe, and was eventually allowed to sleep inside its gates. The people there heard him playing a beat-up guitar someone had given him, which led to an audition for a musical play, and then career as an actor. He also became a musician, first with a circus-like samba-pop group called Farofa Carioca, then as solo artist, releasing Samba Esporte Fino


In 2002, he landed the role of gangster Knockout Ned in the film City of God, Fernando Mereilles's devastating portrait of gang warfare in Rio's slums, which be came a critical and cult hit. That in turn that lead to the part in The Life Aquatic, and friendships with stars Bill Murray and Willem Dafoe, who appear in the music video for Cru , Jorge's latest recording.

It has been a long journey with an al most impossible start. "Getting out of the favela is a big deal," says Jorge, now 35. "The gangsters are so powerful, drug trafficking is rife and no one has jobs. Survival is die key word. Getting out of the ... is everyone's aspiration. How you do it is up to you."

He says friendships with Hollywood stars and parts in hit films haven't made him forget his roots. "I am a realist with my feet firmly on the ground. What it is another step up the ladder of life."

For all its terrors, life in Jorge's poor neighborhood of Baixanda Fluminense also had its fun and inspiration. positive side to favelas is that music is still a key part. Instead of getting down about their situation, the people have...samba dances, and for that short time everyone is happy and friendly," Jorge says. His father played percussion in a small orchestra, and he's inspired by Brazil's classic tropicalia artists, such as Gilberto Gil, Caetano Veloso and Tom Ze, as well as musicians like Zeca Pagodinho, part of a new generation of samba musicians popular in the favelas.

Cru (which translates as "raw") is sparse contemporary samba, where Jorge's rough voice comes through with a wide range of emotion: yearning on  love songs like Jorge's Tive Razao (I Was Right), musing and mournful on Eu Sou Favela (I Am Favela). There's a sombre cover of a Serge Gainsbourg song, Chattertown, about suicide, and an oddly slow, dreamy version of Leiber and Stoller's Don't, made famous by Elvis Presley.

"I love Elvis as he was a white guy bringing black music to the masses!"

But for the most part he writes and picks songs as they move him.

"I write about life as I see it, I don't preach, I just tell. I don't see myself as political either, I just tell it as I feel. If this is interpreted differently and can help people, this is a bonus."