When Pop Stars Act: The best and worst

Dunkirk, Christopher Nolan’s nerve-shredding epic based on the evacuation of allied soldiers from Dunkirk beach in 1940, is out this weekend and looks set to be one of the year’s box-office behemoths. And no doubt a fair proportion of ticket purchases will come from Directioners eager to see the acting debut of Harry Styles, who plays one of the young squaddies stranded on the beach.

But Styles isn’t the only pop star you’ll find on a big screen near you this month. Song to Song, the latest dose of lyrical splendour from Terrence Malick, features a whole host of cameos by musicians (it’s set within the Austin, Texas music scene), from Lykke Li to Iggy Pop. The MVP, however, is rock icon Patti Smith; even the critics who hate the movie love her scenes.

Another pop star bringing their easy charm to a film project this month is Rihanna, who pops up in Luc Besson’s sci-fi epic Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets. Our reviewer, Philip Concannon, wasn’t taken with leads Dane DeHaan and Cara Delevingne who “deliver callow, charmless performances”; Rihanna, however, was a different story. “In just a few minutes on screen she injects Valerian with a much-needed jolt of wit, sensuality, charisma and sheer star power,” he writes.

These are three fine performances, but cinema is littered with plenty of bad ones (TV too if you sat through Ed Sheeran’s cameo in Game of Thrones). Below we count down five pop star performances that we adore, and five where the musician should have stuck to their day job. (In the spirit of fairness, we’ve excluded the likes of Will Smith, Mark Wahlberg and Queen Latifah, given their acting careers have long eclipsed their singing ones at this point.)

Five great pop star movie performances

David Bowie in The Prestige (Christopher Nolan, 2006)

Bowie gave some wonderful screen performances in his time, and showed a sharp eye for collaborators. He’s played a discombobulated alien for Nic Roeg (The Man Who Fell to Earth), a defiant prisoner of war for Nagisa Oshima (Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence), a vanishing FBI agent for David Lynch (Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me) and a sleazy goblin king for Jim Henson (Labyrinth).

If we had to choose our favourite Bowie performance, however, we’d plump for his mysterious turn as real-life Victorian inventor Nikola Tesla in Christopher Nolan’s The Prestige. Up until Bowie’s appearance, Nolan’s film resembled a straightforward thriller documenting the rivalry between two magicians. But Bowie’s dislocated, eerie performance brings real magic.

Justin Timberlake in The Social Network (David Fincher, 2010)

Ol’ Trousersnake has had mixed results on the big screen. For every Inside Llewyn Davis or Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping there’s an insipid In Time or Friends with Benefits. While he’s been plugging away at his acting career for over a decade now, Timberlake is still to better his witty turn in David Fincher’s The Social Network as Napster founder Sean Parker, whom the pop star plays as a devilish playboy chancer who convinces the Facebook co-founder to sell his soul and stab his best pal in the back.

Cher in Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean (Robert Altman, 1982)

Cher had a great run of films in the 80s, including Silkwood, Mask, Mermaids and Moonstruck. She won a Best Actress Oscar for the latter, in which she played a kickarse Italian-American widow who falls for her fiance's younger brother (played by Nic Cage).

Her finest big screen performance, however, was her debut, as a vivacious sexpot waitress for a small-town diner in Robert Altman’s unsung gem Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean. She co-stars with some pretty intimidating screen performers – Sandy Dennis, Karen Black, Kathy Bates – but Cher steals the movie through sheer force of personality.

Eminem in 8 Mile (Curtis Hanson, 2002)

We knew Marshall Mathers III was a fine actor long before he made his film debut in Curtis Hanson’s winning coming-of-age drama. As hip-hop star Eminem he would deftly switch between the multitude of characters who populate his songs, from disturbed mega-fans Stan to the wild Slim Shady.

Here he plays Rabbit, a young rapper trying to break out of his trailer trash life and away from his self-destructive mother through his music. The role may not be much of a stretch – Rabbit’s life, including the unstable mother, isn’t a million miles from Eminem's own – but the rapper brings a whole load of charisma to the role.

Madonna in Desperately Seeking Susan (Susan Seidelman, 1985)

Desperately Seeking Susan wasn’t Madonna’s first movie performance – she appeared in indie art hookum A Certain Sacrifice and belted out Causing a Commotion as a club singer in limp teen romance Vision Quest – but this was the first that proved she could act.

Rosanna Arquette is this screwball thriller’s ostensible star, playing a bored New Jersey housewife who is enlivened when she’s mistaken for Madonna’s Susan, but it’s the Material Girl who walks away with the film playing a less famous version of her 80s persona, rubber bangles and all. Desperately Seeking Susan also features Madonna’s greatest pop tune, Into the Groove, which her character ends up dancing to unselfconsciously in the club with Arquette character’s yuppy husband.

[Honorable mentions for Mick Jagger in Performance, Prince in Purple Rain, Bette Midler in Ruthless People, Dolly Parton in Nine to Five and Bob Dylan in Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid]

Five not so great pop star performances

The Spice Girls in Spice World (Bob Spiers, 1997)

Sporty, Baby, Scary, Ginger and Posh attempt their version of Richard Lester’s Fab Four riot Help! or John Boorman’s knockabout Dave Clark Five film Catch Us If You Can and fail miserably, despite a lively supporting cast that includes Richard E Grant, Kevin Allen, Stephen Fry, Roger Moore and Alan Cumming. The film has all the visual panache of an ITV sitcom and the girls’ timing as actors is even more sketchy than their singing voices.

Sting in Dune (David Lynch, 1984)

David Lynch’s wildly inventive but deeply flawed adaptation of Frank Herbert's sci-fi opus has much to love if you can get past the convoluted plot machinations. One thing that’s hard to overlook, however, is the truly awful performance from Sting, who plays the film’s peacocking villain. While there’s no denying Sting looks good in his space speedos, it’s hard to believe the lute-playing troubadour as a knife-wielding heavy.

50 Cent in Get Rich or Die Tryin’ (Jim Sheridan, 2005)

Taking a leaf out of his mentor Eminem’s playbook, 50 Cent attempts to make his own version of 8 Mile, but the results are far more contrived. Jim Sheridan does a workman-like job behind the camera, but Fiddy rarely convinces as an actor, and shows little insight into his own life as the film follows his wild early years and his rise to fame.

Madonna in Body of Evidence (Uli Edel, 1993)

Ah, poor Madge. After her rich turn in Desperately Seeking Susan it’s been a mixed bag acting-wise. She’s fun in the likes of Who’s That Girl and A League of their Own, but these effervescent delights are far outweighed by the dross – Swept Away, Shanghai Surprise, Dick Tracy and The Next Big Thing.

Worst of the lot is this Basic Instinct knockoff. While it may share the same ridiculous sex scenes and pulp dialogue as Paul Verhoeven’s film, it has none of Basic Instinct’s comic punch. And the courtroom scenes – to determine if Madonna has killed her older boyfriend through her vigorous love making – seem never-ending.

Vanilla Ice in Cool as Ice (David Kellogg, 1991)

Remember those six months back in the early 90s where the world decided to make Vanilla Ice the biggest star on the planet? While we may wish to forget that ever happened, here’s some hard evidence that it did. The chisel-jawed rapper stars as a biker rebel who’s here to shake up small town America with his sick raps and sweep a young woman in witness protection off her feet. As the trailer has it: "He's going to take an uncool world, and chill it... to the bone." Of all the pop-star vanity projects ever made, this is the most bafflingly insane.