10 Worst Rock Music Film Biopics Ever
9. Beyond The Sea
At 35 years of age, Kevin Spacey was considered too old to play 1950s and ‘60s hitmaker Bobby Darin. Darin had, after all, been a teen star and was just 37 when he died.
This didn’t deter Spacey from having his manager ring up Warner Bros. (who owned the movie rights) to put him forward for the part several times a year, starting from 1994. He was, unsurprisingly, even older when he finally got to make his pet project a decade later…
It doesn’t help that Bobby Darin married at 24 to a woman, Sandra Dee, who was only 16. That’s already creepy by today’s standards but things get even worse when you consider the actress cast opposite Spacey, Kate Bosworth, was 24 years his junior.
Spacey, who apparently felt a strong kinship with Bobby Darin, also presented a strangely sanitised version of the singer’s life story, drawing a veil over darker moments. He downplays the heart disease that defined Darin’s life.
The Usual Suspects actor refused to take a fee for writing, directing, acting in Beyond The Sea and took voice coaching to sing Darin’s songs himself. It’s hard not to view the film as a grand, egomaniacal folly.