10 Best Acting Performances By Musicians

David Bowie is David Bowie in The Man Who Fell To Earth. He’s David Bowie as Nikolai Tesla in The Prestige; David Bowie as a prisoner of war in Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence; and, bizarrely, David Bowie as Pontius Pilate in the otherwise deadly serious Last Temptation Of Christ.He does his Bowie voice and his Bowie mannerisms, and it takes you out of the film every time and it’s always fantastic.

Think of this as a career retrospective. It may be unfair to refrain from singling out any particular David Bowie role, but it seems just as unfair not to discuss them all. For truly the man was a titan of the cinema, making up what he lacked in classical training with utter devotion, winning charisma, and every ounce of oddness you would expect from the erstwhile-Thin White Duke. He could be charming – see The Snowman – or comically sinister – see career-defining role Jareth in Labyrinth – but he was always Bowie, larger than life and evidently having a whale of a time.

Look, maybe Bowie’s thespian skills are low on anyone’s list of reasons they miss him. But seeing Bowie pop up on screen was like being visited by a benevolent alien, who wasn’t super great at acting, but had a real good go of it every single time. And you can’t say that about many of today’s stars.