"Jacques Bailly as himself" -- the superficially unlikely line will show up on another set of movie credits when the associate professor of classics appears in his second feature film, "Akeelah and the Bee," which opens nationwide on April 28.

Bailly, who also was on-screen in the Oscar-nominated documentary "Spellbound," won the spelling bee in 1980 and is in his fourth year as the competition’s pronouncer. He traveled to Los Angeles to add verisimilitude to the film, which depicts a young girl’s rise from a rough urban neighborhood to competing in the Scripps National Spelling Bee.

The movie stars Angela Bassett, Laurence Fishburne and young Keke Palmer. The early reviews are good, and the film is getting a heavy promotional push from Starbucks and Oprah Winfrey. "Critics predict it will become the sleeper hit of the year. I'm not a critic, but I predict that, too," Winfrey says. "This is the movie you want your kids to see."

Bailly agrees. "It's everything you expect from a good Hollywood film" he says.

Although his screen time in "Spellbound" was quite brief, Bailly enjoys more screen time in the new film. The classicist’s role on celluloid, as in life, is as the bee’s head pronouncer — the person who mans the microphone during the tense competition and speaks the words to be spelled. During breaks in activity on the movie set, Bailly filled in curious actors about the arcana of spelling and spelling bees.

For more on Bailly's work with the spelling bee, see this 2003 article: King Bee. "Akeelah and the Bee" opens locally on April 28 in South Burlington, Essex Junction and Williston. This year’s Scripps National Spelling Bee begins May 31. The bee — and, of course, Bailly — will be aired live and in prime time on ABC on June 1.