The Loop Culture

Destiny’s Wild

H-Town’s diva darling fashions a big year.

LeToya Luckett started her career as part of a singing act, but her life has evolved into a balancing act. With a movie hitting in February, her third album in production and multiple Houston fashion boutiques to juggle, this celeb/fashionista/entrepreneur is setting an ambitious pace for ’12 that’s sure to put your resolutions to shame.

As a co-founder of Destiny’s Child with Beyoncé and Kelly Rowland, Houston-born Renaissance Woman Luckett  first scored as a musician, winning two Grammys with the group before going solo. Now, the 30-year-old is in the studio every night, hard at work on album No. 3, due to drop in the coming months. Her  first two albums, 2006’s LeToya and Lady Love in 2009, zipped up the R&B charts, and the new disc, said to be inventive, will likely prove similarly successful.

“I’m trying different things, like live instruments,” Luckett says. “I think people are going to hear the difference.” Details about the record are still under wraps, but Luckett says there might be a common thread in all the tracks she co-writes: heart-thumping romance. “All the ups and downs. Love has many faces.”

But before the disc hits, look for Luckett in next month’s From the Rough, a  film about the  first female college golf coach. Luckett plays the girlfriend of a golfer portrayed by Tom Felton. So what kind of kisser is the actor best known as Harry Potter’s sniveling nemesis Draco Malfoy? “You’ve got to watch it to  find out,” she laughs, insisting Felton is a sweetheart in real life.

Luckett seems to have a natural knack for acting. She showed up to her first audition hoping to be considered for a supporting role—and still ended up with the lead in 2010’s Preacher’s Kid, a prodigal-son story in which she leaves home to pursue a singing career. Of course, it probably didn’t hurt that Luckett was able to lend her own gospel-flecked vocals to the part, and that she is a preacher’s kid. Her dad is a minister at Houston’s Brentwood Baptist Church, which is where Luckett took the mic for the  first time as a child.

There’s a little of the real Luckett in all of her roles. She brightened the spy comedy Killers with her true bubbly personality, playing Katherine Heigl’s bestie. In her recurring role in the gritty HBO drama, Treme, playing a new resident of post-Katrina New Orleans, she says she channels the nerves she felt when she  first moved from Houston to L. A., where she lives part-time.

The performer also has a home in River Oaks, and turns up often at the Galleria, her childhood “second home.” It was her love a air with shopping that led her to open Lady L boutique in Uptown Park eight years ago, which her mom helps run.  e shop goes for chic but cute, with lines including Black Halo and Miss Me.

In ’09 they opened a new Lady L, in the Galleria. Besides the threads for men, women and kids hanging among platinum records, the store has something unique: an adjoining dance studio. But, for Luckett, the newer store’s mall setting offers benefits beyond Zumba. “A lot of cute boys in the Galleria,” she laughs. “Eye candy. I’m single so I’m on the lookout.” And she’s not just window-shopping! “I’d love to have a Houston boy. All my family’s down here, so it’d be nice on holidays to come home and not have to  y o somewhere.”

It’s staying close to her family that keeps her grounded, she says, even on blessedly busy days. “I just think sometimes, ‘Wow, God. You really chose me,’” she says. “I’m very thankful I get to live this life.”

Interview by Bethany Poller, Houston Magazine, February 2012.