It is a long perceived truism that all rock stars want to be actors and all rock stars want to be actors; evidence for which is strewn about the battle fields of popular culture like bodies at the Somme. Jagger, Bowie, Starr, Bon Jovi, Elvis are just a few of the luminaries that have tried to bridge the divide with only occasionally tolerable results. While actors such as Johnny Depp, Steven Seagal, Russell Crowe and, of course, David Hasselhoff are the offenders from the acting fraternity. But, with the demise of the twentieth paradigm of the rock-star such parallels are increasingly difficult to identify, and so studios are forced to draw upon the iconography of previous decades as have HBO with
Lars Ulrich. Ulrich the drummer of sweaty thrash metal behemoths Metallica has had a brief television cameo appearance in the past in The Barbarian and as himself in Get Him To The Greek, but his first proper acting role is set to come in
Emingway & Gellhorn, a dramatization of the married years of Ernest Hemingway (
Clive Owen) and Martha Gellhorn (
Nicole Kidman) in which he plays a documentary film-maker named Joris Ivens. Filming has been ongoing for the past two weeks, with the first leaked picture above showing the leading cast members from the set in San Fransisco. Ulrich has the beret & the camera if you hadn't guessed. The HBO film is due to be shown early in 2012 and is directed by
Philip Kaufman (Twisted) from a screenplay by
Jerry Stahl (Bad Boys 2) and
Barbara Turner (The Company).