7. David Bowie - Nikola Tesla (The Prestige)
The casting of David Bowie as famed inventor and genius Nikola Tesla in
The Prestige is, at first glance, terribly distracting and bewildering. Why, of all the accomplished actors in the entire world, did director Christopher Nolan opt for an English musician of such universal recognition? But Christopher Nolan knew that it would take somebody who was genuinely strange and otherworldly to portray a historial figure like Tesla, and Bowie - though cast in a role that seems so unlikely to him - eventually begins to feel like an added element of genius. It feels more like an artistic touch than a performance in places, that's for sure, but given Tesla's reputation as the unsung scientific genius of the past two hundred years, Bowie's placement right at the centre of this sneaky sci-movie brings it all together into a fluid whole - he's the final ingredient that makes
The Prestige work. There are many who might claim that his appearance here is a horrible case of miscasting and even ego on Nolan's part, but that would be missing the point entirely: both Tesla and Bowie are inventors, innovators and performers, after all.