Cool singer and a smashing director (7,4)

'cool singer' is the definition.
I don't know anything about this answer so I can't tell whether it can be defined by this definition.

'a smashing director' is the wordplay.
I cannot quite understand how this works, but
'a' is found in the answer.
'director' could be 'roeg' (I've seen this before) and 'roeg' is present in the answer.
The remaining letters 'nicols' is a valid word which might be clued in a way I don't understand.
This may be the basis of clue (or it may be nonsense).

'and' is the link.

Can you help me to learn more?