10 Best Acting Performances By Musicians

OK, so granted – it’s not the most imaginitive casting in the world. A rags-to-riches white rapper who rose through the battle scene playing a rags-to-prospective riches white battle rapper. But for Eminem’s big screen debut, it makes perfect sense, and it’s not like you’d want to see him playing King Louis XIV (except that you would because that would be the greatest film of all time).

So it’s unsurprising that he does such a good job as James “B” Rabbit, hard grinding Detroit MC, but that doesn’t take anything away from his performance. Channelling, one would imagine, much of the anger and resentment he felt as an up and coming performing trying to break into a less than welcoming culture, Mathers is the epitome of the plucky underdog, caring for his daughter, living in a trailer, and battling Pimp My Ride host Xzibit at the steel mill they both work at.

A film that could so easily have been just awful, 8 Mile succeeds primarily due to the casting of a musician; the potential cringe factor of having, say, Edward Norton letting us know that Papa Doc went to Cranbrook (that’s a private school) is overwhelming. But as a star-making vehicle for (at the time) the world’s most popular rapper, it works perfectly, a 21st century Rocky with added disses.