Rihanna is passing up an opportunity to reprise the role that Whitney Houston made famous in 1992. Instead, she says, she wants to play a 'character.'

The S&M singer is taking a road that many musicians often don't take - the road to challenging movie roles. So often you see singers portraying other singers in movies, which likely isn't stretch at all to correctly portray in a believable manner. RiRi isn't interested in taking the easy singer roles, instead she wants a role with a challenge to it.

"Absolutely not," Rihanna says. "I want to separate the two. I hate it when singers do singing movies all the time, because you can never look at them as anybody else."

The 23-year-old Barbados singer has already got a movie slated for a May 2012 release called Battleship, which is based off of the popular children's board game in the works. The movie, which also stars True Blood's Alexander Skarsgard will serve as the singer's acting debut.

"I want to play a character," said Rihanna. "My whole life is playing Rihanna, [so] being a singer [in a film] won't be a stretch for me. I like challenges, and being an actor is playing a role, being able to step into somebody else's shoes, that's the excitement."

Now, it'll remain to be seen how good she is at stepping into a character's shoes and breathing life into a new character. If she's as good at it as she makes it sound, then movie-goers could be in for a real treat next year. Until then, it seems her fans will have to settle for watching her videos if they want to see her in film format.