Singers/Musicians Who Have Been Portrayed On Screen

[woody123]

In the episode Last Wave of the short lived science fiction tv series Dark Skies the main characters met a young pre-Doors Jim Morrison.In the Dark Days Night episode Brian Epstein is featured(ok not a musician but music related).

[Tonch]

Talking of the big guns of the 60s, how many times has Saint Lennon been portrayed on screen? Imdb knows, I suppose, but I remember spending time on:

The Birth of the Beatles (Stephen MacKenna)
Backbeat and The Hours and the Times (Ian Hart)
Lennon Naked (Christopher Eccleston)
Nowhere Boy (Aaron Johnson)

All of which, other than Nowhere Boy, suffer from the biopic disease of having people too old to play the part.

Mark McGann (John & Yoko - A Love Story) garnered a fair amount of praise for his portrayal, even though he was slightly too young to be the John of 1966 when the film's setting begins, let alone the John of 1980 when the drama ends (too many Lennon biopics spread themselves across too wide a span of years).

Philip McQuillan (In His Life: The John Lennon Story) was about the right age to portray Lennon in the memorable scene where he beats up Cavern DJ Bob Wooler at Paul McCartney's 21st birthday party..... and Jared Harris (Two Of Us) didn't make too bad a job of it either, he was perhaps 3 or 4 years older than John was for the time the film was set but that's no big deal. John always looked a bit older than his years anyway.

One of my personal favourites was Bernard Hill (John Lennon: A Journey In The Life) - he more or less nailed it I thought.

[billy farmer]

Ricky Nelson has been portrayed on Screen a few times - Ricky Nelson (Character)

[Rowdon]

One of my personal favourites was Bernard Hill (John Lennon: A Journey In The Life) - he more or less nailed it I thought.

Never seen that, and only the tiniest clip of Hill on Youtube - but I'm glad he did Lennon (in that sense) because the similarity always strikes me.

[Steve Crook]

The cast of Hugo (2011) includes someone as Django Reinhardt. Lots of people think it's Johnny Depp playing the role as an uncredited cameo (Depp was a producer on Hugo). But it isn't. Django is played by Emil Lager who does bear a passing resemblance to Mr Depp

Steve

[Tonch]

Never seen that, and only the tiniest clip of Hill on Youtube - but I'm glad he did Lennon (in that sense) because the similarity always strikes me.

As far as I know Hill first played Lennon on stage in the John, Paul, George, Ringo....and Bert stageplay and apparently stole the show (Trevor Eve was "Paul") - although I think one critic commented that Bernard/John "had all the best lines"

The TV portrayal was from about 1985. I seem to remember reading an interview with Bernard Hill at the time, pleased to be "doing" John again for the last time... "After this I'll be too old to play him" he said (or words to that effect, I forget the exact quote).

I'd love to see it again - I seem to recall Bernard popping up as John in a link man/narrator role between little vignettes showing chapters of his earlier life with other actors playing the childhood/teenage/younger Johns. It was quite clever and one thing I loved about it (and dislike about so many other biopics) was the close attention to physical detail. Hill had the costumes and mannerisms to perfection and resisted overdoing the nasal scouse drawl. Each time he reappeared to introduce the next bit he himself had moved on a little - at one point he was dressed in the 1975 OGWT garb, in the next he was wearing the 1980 big spectacles with the authentic stripey school tie, and even the hairstyle subtly adjusted to precisely capture each era. The resemblance was quite alarming.

Little things like that matter to anoraks like me!

[Rowdon]

in the next he was wearing the 1980 big spectacles with the authentic stripey school tie, and even the hairstyle subtly adjusted to precisely capture each era. The resemblance was quite alarming.

Little things like that matter to anoraks like me!

As in the first 5 seconds of that one clip on youtube ...




and we're all anoraks when it comes to the Beatles.

[Mr Sloane]

There is this classic

[Tonch]

"Marc Bolan" popped up in a nightclub in Life On Mars and Sam Tyler warned him to be careful on the roads!

[Rowdon]

"Marc Bolan" popped up in a nightclub in Life On Mars and Sam Tyler warned him to be careful on the roads!

I can't understand why absolutely no effort was made to get a Bolan lookalike for that; was it a case of a Bolan-fan-friend-of-the-producer getting the role?

Meanwhile, the Lennon list grows longer.

Paolo Nutini in talks to stage John Lennon biopic | Stage | guardian.co.uk

Could be a good likeness - and only 25!

Screen shot 2012-02-13 at 5.01.49 PM.png

[Markb]

I'm Not There(2007), a bizarre Bob Dylan biopic may not strictly fall into the category because, while it has various actors essentially playing Dylan ( Christian Bale, Richard Gere, Marcus Carl Franklin, Heath Ledger, Ben Whishaw and Cate Blanchett !), all of them are playing fictitious characters who are representations of Dylan at various stages in his life/career-so none of them are actually credited with playing Dylan.

Dylan's 1978 film Renaldo & Clara is another unusual movie, a lengthy mixture of concert footage (from his Rolling Thunder tour in 1975) and semi-improvised scenes. It was written and directed by the great man but in the movie the character of Bob Dylan is played by the musician Ronnie Hawkins, Dylan himself plays the part of Renaldo. I'm a massive Dylan fan and love the film but plenty of Bob fans detest it and I dread to think what anyone who isn't a fan would make of it-it's around 4 hours long and certainly doesn't have anything like a linear plot. It's never been officially available on either video or DVD and as far as I know hasn't been on TV since the late 80's.

Dennis Hopper played Frank Sinatra in The Night We Called It A Day a 2003 film about Frank's 1974 tour of Australia where his typically blunt public remarks about journalists led to several unions going on strike-Bob Hawke who later became PM was at the centre of the controversy and Sinatra was forced to apologise for his comments. Sinatra had recently ended his brief retirement from show business with the album/Tv special Ol' Blue Eyes Is Back and shortly after the Australian debacle he performed a concert at Madison Square Gardens broadcast live on TV (The Main Event) During the show Sinatra joked that in Australia people said 'Ol' big mouth is back'