What do Charli XCX and Meat Loaf have in common? 9 of the best acting performances from musicians
These are the artists who hit the high notes when making the transition from stage to screen.
18 months on from dominating the summer with her hit album Brat, British pop star Charli XCX is about to make an impression in a completely different field.
She’s about to star in The Moment, a mockumentary about, yep, British pop star Charli XCX, as she prepares for an arena tour debut and promotes her hit Brat album.
Yes, it’s all sounding achingly meta and possibly just a teensy bit self-satisfied. The casting of high-profile actors Rosanna Arquette and Alexander Skarsgård in supporting roles feels like something of a coup though, and there’s every chance Charlotte Emma Aitchison (Charli’s real name) will put in a brilliant performance, of course. She seems to be very good at being her, after all.
But it got us to thinking about all of those other musical artists who have really stretched out into the acting world, and who totally knocked it out of the park in their second artistic language. Here, in no particular order, are nine of the best.
1. Dolly Parton in 9 to 5
In this ahead-of-its-time office comedy, three women kidnap their misogynistic monster of a boss after one too many slights and way too many inappropriate comments. Two of those three women are played by acting royalty in Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin. The other, in a piece of inspired casting (at least in retrospect), is played by the Queen of Country music herself, Dolly Parton. The latter’s contribution amounts to far more than just a fabulous title song, too, bringing her charm and wit to bear on the central role of slandered secretary Doralee Rhodes.
2. Meat Loaf in Fight Club
Think of your favourite ‘70s hard-rock superstar. Now imagine the kind of movie role they might go in for a mere six years on from releasing a 14-million-selling hit album. Whatever you’re thinking, Marvin Lee Aday didn’t do that. In 1999’s Fight Club, the artist we now know as Meat Loaf signed up to play Robert "Bob" Paulson, an overweight, none-too-bright schlub brought low by steroid abuse and serious illness. It’s a deeply unflattering portrayal, but a hugely convincing performance that totally validates the Bat Out of Hell singer’s choice to pursue acting as a second career.
3. Ice Cube in Boyz n the Hood
We’ve all come to accept O'Shea Jackson as a respectable actor, and part of that comes down to his first ever performance in John Singleton’s Boyz n the Hood. The N.W.A rapper we all know as Ice Cube (who wrote the track the film is named after) took leave from his day job spitting rhymes with Dr. Dre and Eazy-E to accept one of the lead roles in this incisive look at South LA street life. Its an unflinching examination of racial tension, gang violence and gentrification that hits as hard today as it did in the early ‘90s.
4. Barbra Streisand in The Way We Were
This classic 1973 slice of melodrama didn’t introduce the world to Barbra Streisand’s acting talents – that came five years earlier with her acting debut in Funny Girl, which also won the singer a Best Actress Oscar. However, we’d argue that her performance in The Way We Were made even more of an impact. Sydney Pollack’s film has come to represent a certain kind of Hollywood ‘weepy’ that would become a mainstay of the industry for years to come. Streisand’s performance as a young Marxist anti-war campaigner, and her relationship with Robert Redford’s handsome WASP, is at the heart of that.
5. Björk in Dancer in the Dark
Iceland’s Björk Guðmundsdóttir is known as an enigmatic musical talent, but in 2000 she chose to transpose some of her beguiling appeal to the silver screen. Lars von Trier’s devastatingly bleak musical won this singular artist the Best Actress Award at that year’s Cannes Film Festival. It’s not an easy watch by any means, and it’s fair to say that the film divides opinion to this day. Thanks to Björk’s committed performance as a factory worker with a degenerative eye condition, however, there’s a good chance you won’t be able to take your eyes off the screen.
6. Janelle Monáe in Moonlight
The history of the Academy Awards is littered with the corpses of movies that were subsequently deemed unworthy, but 2016’s Moonlight is the rarest of exceptions. In a film that’s almost universally loved to this day, and one that’s filled with outstanding performances, Janelle Monáe’s relatively minor role might not register as too significant. But the fact that the We Are Young singer comfortably holds her own in such elevated company – and in her first ever film role at that – is impressive in its own right. She also did good work in Hidden Figures that same year.
![Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence [1983] Official Trailer - YouTube](https://img.youtube.com/vi/6GxiqbFG_Dw/maxresdefault.jpg)
7. David Bowie in Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence
By the time Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence hit cinemas in mid-1983, David Bowie was already far more than a mere rock star. He was a musical legend fresh off the latest in an extended run of brilliantly shape-shifting albums, each shot through with a pronounced theatricality. For his next role, Bowie would drop the music altogether and play it straight as a captured Australian soldier in a Japanese POW camp. It was a performance that was arguably even more alien to the star than the drugged up alien of The Man Who Fell to Earth, but he pulled it off.
8. Cher in Moonstruck
It can be all too easy for non-fans to downplay Cher’s talents: the kitsch fashion sense, the larger-than-life diva personality, the pitch-shifted vocals of her latter day music. There’s no need to make a defence of her obvious star quality though – back in 1988 Cheryl Sarkisian won the Best Actress Oscar. It was handed out for her spirited performance as an Italian-American widow drawn into a tempestuous relationship with her fiancé’s brother, as played by a dashing young Nicolas Cage. Romcom’s rarely come with as much wit or heart, and they certainly don’t tend to have such a charismatic lead.
9. Mark Wahlberg in Boogie Nights
Thinking of Mark Wahlberg as a musician will seem pretty odd to anyone under 30. Wahlberg got his start, however, not as a young actor, but as the lead member of Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch – a poppy hip hop act that turned out two hit albums in the early ‘90s. Young Marky continued his musical journey well into the decade before quitting to pursue a burgeoning acting career. He only truly arrived with 1997’s Boogie Nights, in which he played dim-witted porn star Dirk Diggler. Whether you love or hate Wahlberg as an actor, you’ve got Paul Thomas Anderson to thank.
Skip the search — follow Shortlist on Google News to get our best lists, news, features and reviews at the top of your feeds!
You must confirm your public display name before commenting
Please logout and then login again, you will then be prompted to enter your display name.