Nia Vardalos and Toni Collette drag it up in Connie and Carla

Screen brides Nia Vardalos and Toni Collette are going undercover as drag queens. Vardalos, who wrote and starred in 2002's surprise blockbuster My Big Fat Greek Wedding, and Collette, whose breakout role came with the 1994 Australian hit Muriel's Wedding, team up as pals on the run in Connie and Carla, opening Friday. "We certainly realized the comparison between our lives, the two wedding girls in this movie," Vardalos, 41, told the Associated Press. "For both of us, those films kind of changed our lives," said Collette, 31, an Academy Award nominee for supporting actress for The Sixth Sense. "I was kind of catapulted into flying around the world doing publicity, and so was she." Written by Vardalos, Connie and Carla is the tale of two musical-theater performers (Vardalos and Collette) who witness a mob killing in Chicago and hit the road to stay ahead of gangsters. They end up in Los Angeles, where they pose as drag queens and become stars at a gay club. Vardalos's character finds romance with the brother (David Duchovny) of one of her new drag-queen pals. The chemistry was there from the start for Vardalos and Collette, whose characters are meant to be lifelong friends who have been singing together since childhood. "She came in, we met each other, we hugged," said Vardalos, an Oscar nominee for her Greek Wedding screenplay. "We went to the piano, we started singing, and we couldn't believe it--how well our voices blended."