10 musi­cal per­for­mances by actors who real­ly learned their instruments

There always seems to be a steady flow of musi­cians try­ing there hand at act­ing, but what hap­pens when the tables are reversed? In Adam McKay’s new film The Big Short, Chris­t­ian Bale plays Dr Michael Bur­ry, a hedge fund man­ag­er with a taste for heavy met­al. In one scene Bur­ry unwinds by drum­ming along to the Pan­tera track ​‘By Demons Be Dri­ven’, an un-faked feat made pos­si­ble by real-life drum­mer Scott Wittenberg.

This brief but mem­o­rable scene got us think­ing about oth­er instances where actors have picked up an instru­ment for a role. From singing to learn­ing how to strum, here are 10 stand-out musi­cal per­for­mances from well-known actors ranked in order of tunefulness.

There’s just some­thing not quite right about Christo­pher Walken bow­ing a cel­lo as clas­si­cal musi­cian Peter Mitchell in this piece from A Late Quar­tet. It should come as no sur­prise that Walken learned the bare min­i­mum to make his role as a cel­list seem believ­able. Walken unequiv­o­cal­ly takes the award for most awk­ward musi­cal turn by a fair margin.

Next up Hugh Grant chan­nels his inner Ed Sheer­an in this wince-induc­ing duet with a pre-pubes­cent Nicholas Hoult. Attempt­ing to sal­vage Hoult’s timid a cap­pel­la dis­play in a school tal­ent con­test, Grant only results in shift­ing the embar­rass­ment onto him­self. In prepa­ra­tion for the role Grant received gui­tar lessons from British com­pos­er Paul Eng­lish­by, and there’s cer­tain­ly no doubt over the authen­tic­i­ty of his instru­men­tal and vocal abil­i­ty here. Like the atten­tion-seek­ing drunk at a karaōke night, Grant’s per­for­mance over­stays its wel­come. Just go home, Hugh.

Allured by the thought of main­stream suc­cess, Frank seeks to merge his avant-garde sound with a pop­u­lar sen­si­bil­i­ty when pro­duc­ing his ​‘most like­able song ever.’ Instead, Frank cre­ates a lyri­cal and audi­to­ry mon­stros­i­ty – although Michael Fass­ben­der actu­al­ly exhibits an impres­sive vocal range through­out the film, par­tic­u­lar­ly in a touch­ing final num­ber. If we’re being frank (ba-dum-tsh!) though, this is his melod­ic nadir.

Reveal­ing her strange array of hob­bies to Adrien Brody’s con artist, Bloom, Rachel Weisz per­forms the ban­jo, gui­tar, vio­lin and accor­dion all with­in the space of 10 sec­onds. Sur­pris­ing­ly, despite the throw­away nature of this seg­ment, Weisz was taught to play all four instru­ments, report­ed­ly rehears­ing the chords in her spare time. While her devo­tion and ver­sa­til­i­ty is impres­sive the brevi­ty of her per­for­mance sad­ly places her as a one-hit wonder.

The Cruiser’s moody ren­di­tion of Lestat’s Piano Sonata took a mere five weeks to per­fect, with help from celebri­ty pianist teacher Margie Bal­ter, and the result is equal mea­sures haunt­ing and adroit. How­ev­er, Cruise los­es marks for being so po-faced – seri­ous­ly, we know you’re a vam­pire and all, but why does every­thing have to be so ominous?!

It was musi­cian Howard Alden’s job to teach begin­ner Sean Penn for his role as fic­tion­al jazz gui­tarist Emmet Ray in Woody Allen’s Sweet and Low­down. Despite going to town on his fin­ger move­ments, Penn sounds con­vinc­ing enough and scrapes a pass in our actor’s music school.

Ryan Gosling + dinky ukulele + war­bling love song = har­mon­ic heav­en. Despite Gosling’s pre­vi­ous musi­cal expe­ri­ence with his band Dead Man’s Bones, this per­for­mance is just too good to omit. Simul­ta­ne­ous­ly roman­tic and som­bre, this won­der­ful­ly ten­der scene encap­su­lates the key themes of the film in one sub­lime moment.

Who would have thought that Nicholas Cage’s solo man­dolin per­for­mance would be the most con­vinc­ing thing in this lack­lus­tre war film? Back when Cage’s cred­i­bil­i­ty was still intact it was that man again, Paul Eng­lish­by, who taught him how to play the man­dolin entire­ly from scratch. Cage report­ed­ly quick­ly evolved into an accom­plished play­er. If only he showed the same lev­el of ded­i­ca­tion to his craft nowadays…

Pos­sess­ing no pre­vi­ous musi­cal expe­ri­ence and after just a hand­ful of lessons with singing coach Roger Love, Keira Knightly’s dain­ty vocal and instru­men­tal demo in Begin Again is a piece of pure cin­e­mat­ic joy. Her soft, unaf­fect­ed voice and nifty strum­ming syncs per­fect­ly with the authen­tic tone of the film.

Top of the bill is not one but two out­stand­ing act­ing and musi­cal turns. Roger Love again col­lects plau­dits for prep­ping Joaquin Phoenix and Reese With­er­spoon in their respec­tive roles as John­ny Cash and June Carter. Both nail their per­for­mances, pro­vid­ing authen­tic croon­ing and an elec­tric chem­istry, com­plet­ing a remark­able trans­for­ma­tion from musi­cal novices.

Behind the scenes rumours that both actors came close to quit­ting over the dif­fi­cul­ty of learn­ing to sing and play the gui­tar (and auto-harp) sim­ply add to the weight of their per­for­mances. This ren­di­tion of Bob Dylans’s ​‘It Ain’t Me Babe’ cap­tures the essence of their pas­sion­ate, tight­ly-knit on-screen rela­tion­ship, not to men­tion the heart-warm­ing togeth­er­ness that char­ac­teris­es coun­try music.

Do you have a favourite musi­cal per­for­mance that didn’t make our list? Let us know @LWLies