By Declan Cashin
Saturday Feb 18 2012

Anyone who has seen the trailer for action movie 'Battleship' might have spotted an unexpected face interspersed with those of leading men Liam Neeson and Taylor Kitsch.

There, donning her most serious 'don't mess with me, alien invaders' face is pop star Rihanna, who is taking time out from scandalising sensitive souls with her raunchy music routines to be a movie star.

Rocker Lenny Kravitz plays a key role in next month's futuristic teen thriller 'The Hunger Games', while R&B artist Ne-Yo will appear in the historical war flick 'Red Tails'.

Fair play to them, some might say, but the lot of them should know that the track record of singers-turned-actors (STA) has been as unsteady as a vibrato note.

That has never stopped some of the world's most famous troubadours and chanteuses from attempting this most tricky of entertainment crossovers, however.

The pioneering STAs in the movie industry set a pretty high bar for those who were to follow. Bing Crosby made his mark early in the film industry, winning an Oscar in 1944 for his performance in 'Going My Way'.

Over the next 20 years, Bing ratcheted up such enormous ticket sales for films such as 'White Christmas', 'The Country Girl' and his series of 'Road To ... ' films with Bob Hope.

The 'International Motion Picture Almanac' last year placed him at No 7 on the list of all-time money-making movie stars.

Equally, Frank Sinatra won over sceptics by giving an Oscar-winning performance in the war classic 'From Here to Eternity' (1953).

That gave the singer the boost to pursue an eclectic career that took in crowd-pleasing hits such as the Rat Pack classic 'Oceans 11', the musicals 'Guys and Dolls' and 'High Society', and the original 'The Manchurian Candidate' (1962), a film that most critics agree was ahead of its time in both cinematic style and content.

Curiously, since then, very few male singers have made as substantial an impact in the movie business.

The undisputed singer-turned-actor champ of modern times is Mark Wahlberg, who left his Marky Mark rapper days behind him with 'Boogie Nights' and went on to get an Oscar nomination for his role in 'The Departed'.

Mark has had his share of duds, undoubtedly -- 'The Happening' is a cinematic turkey of near-mystical proportions -- but the 40-year-old has shown enough gumption to develop his own material (such as last year's Oscar-winning 'The Fighter') and to branch out as a TV producer on the likes of 'Entourage' and 'Boardwalk Empire'.

Of female singing stars, Barbra Streisand, formerly a nightclub performer and Broadway musical star, successfully made the leap into movies with 'Funny Girl', which won her the 1968 Best Actress Oscar (in a tie with Katherine Hepburn, no less).

She then enjoyed a string of box-office hits with the likes of 'Hello Dolly!', 'What's Up Doc?', 'The Way We Were' and 'A Star is Born'.

Barbra's achievements as an actress shouldn't be underestimated. Starting in 1969 and continuing for another 11 years, the singer appeared in the annual movie exhibitors poll of Top 10 Box Office attractions a total of 10 times, often as the only woman on the list.

Over the past 20 years or so, Barbra has scaled back on screen acting, but she has directed herself in movies such as 'Yentl' (1983) and 'The Prince of Tides' (1991).

One of her contemporaries, Cher, also had an unlikely but nonetheless impressive short run at a film career.

She made a striking film debut in 1983 as Meryl Streep's lesbian roommate in the drama 'Silkwood', earning an Oscar nomination in the process, and then won Best Actress at Cannes in 1985 for playing the biker mum of a disfigured son in 'Mask'.

Two years after that, Cher won the Best Actress Oscar for her performance in the romantic comedy 'Moonstruck', a hugely popular win on the night (the clip is on YouTube).

After that, the singer had minor successes with 'The Witches of Eastwick' and 'Mermaids', but her film career more or less stalled in the 1990s.

Cher did make a mini-comeback last year in 'Burlesque', a trashy guilty pleasure opposite another putative singer-turned-actor Christina Aguilera.

Then there's the case of Madonna, whose acting CV, as with so much of her career, demands a category all to itself.

Her screen career started well with 'Desperately Seeking Susan' in the mid-1980s, but she quickly followed it with two massive flops, 'Who's That Girl?' and 'Shanghai Surprise', with her then-husband Sean Penn, bagging Madge the first of an astounding seven career Razzie Awards for Worst Actress.

This uneven approach to quality control continued into the 1990s. Madge equipped herself well as Warren Beatty's handpicked choice for leading lady in 'Dick Tracy', and she was perfectly fine in the baseball comedy 'A League of Their Own'.

But then came 'Body of Evidence', the 1993 "erotic" thriller that was anything but.

That dire film was one of the more decisive influences on the Golden Raspberry voting board when it named Madonna the Worst Actress of the 20th century in 2000.

Still, Madge will always have 'Evita', her undoubted career high point as an actress.

While many critics lambasted the singer for essentially starring in an extended music video, she ended up winning a Golden Globe award for her portrayal of Eva Peron.

But if Madge thought her move behind the camera would win over her critics, she was sadly mistaken, to which the recent hostile reception to her directorial debut, 'WE', attests.

Inconsistency is probably the defining characteristic of the entire realm of singers-turned-actors.

Some of the most intriguing examples in recent times have been the one-offs.

Björk made a stunning acting debut in the bonkers death-row musical 'Dancer in the Dark', but was so traumatised by the experience of working with the demanding director Lars van Trier that she refused to act in a film ever again.

Similarly, Eminem was impressive essentially playing himself in '8 Mile', but it never developed into anything more.

In the 1996 movie 'The People vs Larry Flint', rocker Courtney Love gave a blazing performance as the title character's drug-addled wife, and she also impressed opposite Jim Carrey in the biopic 'Man on the Moon'.

Another frustrating -- and probably frustrated -- singer-turned-actor is Jennifer Lopez, who started out as a singer and dancer, but only built a successful pop career after establishing herself as a movie star.

And what a start J-Lo had, giving blazing, sizzling performances in 'Selena', 'Out of Sight' and 'U-Turn'.

But in the last decade she squandered any initial goodwill Hollywood showed towards her by delivering one turkey after another: 'Gigli', 'Maid in Manhattan', 'Monster-in-Law', 'The Back-Up Plan' ... and so on.

Of the new generation, the most promising so far has been Justin Timberlake, whose role as Napster founder Sean Parker in last year's 'The Social Network' was a real game-changer for him.

Meanwhile, starring in sexy comedy 'Friends With Benefits' burnished his credentials as a potential Hollywood leading man.

Mariah Carey's 2001 debut in the musical-romance 'Glitter' has become a case study in everything that can go wrong when a singer tries to become a movie star.

The critics savaged Mariah's performance. Said one: "When she tries for an emotion --any emotion-- [Carey] looks as if she's lost her car keys."

However, to her credit, Mariah redeemed herself somewhat with her scrubbed-down and subtle portrayal of a social worker in the grim drama 'Precious' (which co-starred Lenny Kravitz as a nurse).

Lastly, today's biggest tween pop stars have gotten off to a poor start in their bids to conquer Hollywood.

Miley Cyrus made no impression with dreary romantic drama 'The Last Kiss', while Justin Bieber made for an unlikely teen criminal in an episode of the TV series 'CSI: Crime Scene Investigation'.

But if nothing else, at least that latter cameo inspired a brilliant -- and disturbingly gratifying -- re-edited viral clip in which Bieber is repeatedly blasted by gunshots.

"All of our wishes have come true!" reads the accompanying comment beneath the video.

If he wants to be successful in moving from singing into acting, then it looks as if Justin will have to take a few acting classes before he can make Beliebers of his harshest critics.

- Declan Cashin

Originally published in

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