10 Best Acting Performances By Musicians

As the excellent documentary 20 Feet From Stardom ably demonstrates, being a backing singer can be pretty thankless work. Beginning her career singing for Bob Dylan and Bette Midler, 8 Simple Rules and Futurama star Katey Sagal had to wait almost two decades before releasing her first album.

She had to wait a little longer than that to be considered one of TV's best actresses, but in Sons Of Anarchy, she came across one of those once in a lifetime roles that unheralded thespians seem to be finding on television dramas these days. As motorcycle gang matriarch Gemma, Sagal is tasked with finding pathos and profundity in a show that can often degenerate into schlock and silliness, and the vast majority of the time she is highly successful. Like many a popular cable drama, Sons Of Anarchy focusses primarily on angry white men, but Sagal takes great joy in playing an even angrier (equally white) woman. Consumed by frustration, anger, power lust, and a contrasting desire to see her son safe and well, Gemma Teller is one of the series' more complex and compelling characters, and until Sons reaches its cartoonish nadir, there's always something to empathise with.

Much has been said, as it should, about the lack of roles for women “of a certain age” on TV and in movies, and Sons goes to lengths to demonstrate why this is so silly. In a show all about vicious, Harley Davidson-bound brutes, the most intimidating character of all is often a 50 year old woman with extensively manicured nails.