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Acting like a rock star

The Rolling Stones
  • Posted at 2:01pm
  • 04 April 2008
  • by AndrewCollins-RT

With Martin Scorsese's much-talked-about Rolling Stones documentary Shine a Light opening in cinemas on 11 April 2008, the sometimes troubled marriage between rock and cinema seems in pretty good shape.

The band's frontman Mick Jagger has always been an iconic rock performer, and in the Swinging Sixties he redefined the relationship between an artist and his audience. So you can't really blame film directors for trying to bottle some of that Jagger juju.

"When I was a kid," says Jagger, "if you were a pop singer you made one bad movie – and that's what I thought I would do."

He thought wrong. Jagger made his feature debut playing a bohemian recluse in Performance, Donald Cammell and Nicolas Roeg's experimental meditation on the nature of identity and fame. It was a role that he pulled off with aplomb.

Giving up the day job wasn't an option, though, as his next project, 1970's Ned Kelly, flopped. That was followed by further disappointments, not least his turn as a bounty hunter in ropey 1992 futuristic thriller Freejack – rockers who spend most of their lives on the road must find it hard to just drop in and out of acting.

Then Jagger surprised everyone with a creditable performance as the creepy but charismatic owner of a male escort agency in 2001 indie drama The Man from Elysian Fields.

Bing Crosby, Elvis, Frank Sinatra and the Beatles all tried their luck on the silver screen with varying success. They might have guaranteed a crowd at the cinema, but fans often had to put up with some underwhelming acting in return.

Sting has also had mixed fortunes – he was out of his depth in Dune, embarrassing in Quadrophenia and only passable in Plenty. The Who’s Roger Daltrey struggled after playing the "deaf, dumb and blind kid" in the band's rock opera Tommy, appearing ill at ease as Rodney Marsh in football biopic Best.

At least Bob Dylan was truly weird in western Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid; likewise David Bowie, who was magnetic in The Man Who Fell to Earth (also directed by Nicolas Roeg) and coolly impressive as Pontius Pilate in The Last Temptation of Christ.

Mind you, the latter was made by Martin Scorsese. Maybe the difference is simply a good director.

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