Six act­ing musi­cians who proved the doubters wrong

Twen­ty years since his last big screen out­ing in Spice World (bygones be bygones), rock­et man Elton John is rumoured to be mak­ing his act­ing come­back in Kings­man: The Gold­en Cir­cle, the sequel to Matthew Vaughn’s mad­cap riff on the spy genre. Musi­cians mak­ing the leap to movies is a move often met with cyn­i­cism. Occa­sion­al­ly, how­ev­er, the naysay­ers are proven wrong.

Oper­at­ing in a dif­fer­ent cre­ative capac­i­ty, some have suc­ceed­ed in defy­ing expec­ta­tion, break­ing out from behind their stu­dio pol­ished veneer to show a dif­fer­ent and in some cas­es dark­er side to their per­sona. Here are six occa­sions where the tran­si­tion from the mic to the movies has yield­ed some sur­pris­ing­ly earnest performances.

Not con­tent with being the singer, song­writer, gui­tar, bass and key­board play­er in his band The White Stripes, Jack White decid­ed to try his hand at act­ing in Jim Jarmusch’s 2003 com­pi­la­tion film Cof­fee and Cig­a­rettes. White lat­er demon­strat­ed his laid back body lan­guage and cool demeanour in Antho­ny Minghella’s war epic Cold Moun­tain. Charm­ing Renée Zellweger’s Ruby with his man­dolin play­ing and warm south­ern vocals, White’s per­for­mance is a sooth­ing coun­ter­point to the film’s moody dra­ma. In an inter­view with The Guardian, White put his suc­cess in part down to the ​“mys­tique that sur­rounds him” – a qual­i­ty that trans­lates effort­less­ly in front of the camera.

Upon the release of Lars von Trier’s Dancer in the Dark, The New York Times advised: ​“Come to the the­atre pre­pared, with a hand­ker­chief in one hand and a rot­ten toma­to in the oth­er.” The film may have polarised opin­ion, but Björk was praised for her lead turn as Czech immi­grant Sel­ma Ježková, who moves to the US with her son in search of a bet­ter life. With the real­i­ty of her sit­u­a­tion prov­ing a lot less rosy, Sel­ma finds escape in clas­sic Hol­ly­wood musi­cals. Rumour has it Björk was so mis­er­able dur­ing film­ing she ate her own cardi­gan. She went on to win the Best Actress award at 2000 Cannes Film Fes­ti­val for her efforts, suc­cess­ful­ly turn­ing her pain into cinema’s gain.

In his book ​‘Hip Hop Mat­ters: Pol­i­tics, Pop Cul­ture, and the Strug­gle for the Soul of a Move­ment’ S Craig Watkins remarks that, ​“Eminem’s abil­i­ty to make his white­ness both mat­ter and not mat­ter is a true Hou­di­ni act,” sug­gest­ing that he used his white­ness to not only high­light out­mod­ed racial prej­u­dices with­in the hip hop scene but also under­mine them through his main­stream appeal, which seemed to tran­scend race.

In his first act­ing gig, Eminem brought a raw authen­tic­i­ty to a semi-auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal film direct­ed by Cur­tis Han­son. 8 Mile chron­i­cles the tur­bu­lent rise of the young rap­per, and sees Eminem draw inspi­ra­tion from his work­ing class roots to launch lyri­cal blows against his rap bat­tle oppo­nents. The provoca­tive star also upset the Acad­e­my that year by win­ning the award for Best Orig­i­nal Song for ​‘Lose Your­self’ only to swerve the cer­e­mo­ny itself.

Direc­tor John Singleton’s por­trait of ​“hood” life in South Cen­tral Los Ange­les launched Ice Cube’s film career in stonk­ing fash­ion. In a 2011 inter­view with MTV, Sin­gle­ton claimed he, ​“knew Ice Cube was a movie star before he knew he was a movie star,” and sug­gest­ed that the rap­per per­fect­ly embod­ied the role of his char­ac­ter, Dough­boy. Ice Cube’s nuanced per­for­mance was a phys­i­cal man­i­fes­ta­tion of his rap­per per­sona – com­plete with the misog­y­nis­tic dia­tribes – and offered a ten­der insight into a world where paths often seem pre­des­tined and prin­ci­ples are the only form of empowerment.

“Grunge queen” Court­ney Love is a fig­ure famed for her untame­able rock­star excess­es. A pop­u­lar sub­ject of scruti­ny and vit­ri­ol, Love fed off the public’s per­cep­tion of her to play the bisex­u­al strip­per wife of Lar­ry Fly­nt (Woody Har­rel­son) in Milos Forman’s biopic of the irrev­er­ent pub­lish­er of porn mag ​‘Hus­tler’. Love cap­tures both the essence of her character’s self-assured sleazi­ness and her fault­less devo­tion to Fly­nt, which is tinged with a sense of fragility.

In David Fincher’s ori­gin sto­ry of Face­book CEO Mark Zucker­berg, Justin Tim­ber­lake brought his pop-star slick­ness to the role of smooth talk­ing Sean Park­er, the Nap­ster co-founder who claimed a size­able stake in the social media network’s fledg­ling empire. Timberlake’s cast­ing raised eye­brows, but his cock­sure char­ac­ter­i­sa­tion of Park­er demand­ed that his for­ay into act­ing be tak­en seri­ous­ly. It’s a per­for­mance that elic­its the same reac­tion you have towards the new gen­er­a­tion of sick­en­ing­ly young app pro­gram­mers – a mix­ture of resent­ment and veneration.