The 10 Best Acting Performances By Musicians In Movies, According To IMDb

Though to become a professional and successful actor often takes years of training and several thousand auditions, some people take to the art form like a duck to water. Some artists are born performers and know how to approach a role better than anyone else, whether they’re actors, comedians, or even musicians.

With many musicians already well versed in entertainment, having to give an engaging live performance almost every night, it only makes sense that they’d be great on-screen too. Many directors have taken advantage of this, and some pros who started out as musicians are even now better known as actors.

10 Eminem – 8 Mile (7.1)

Being semi-autobiographical, 8 Mile harkens back to Eminem’s upbringing and trying to gain recognition as a rapper.

The movie is one of the best films about music and Marshal Mathers steals the show, turning in a shockingly dramatic performance that is up to par with his on-screen colleagues including Michael Shannon, Kim Basinger, and a young Anthony Mackie.

9 Will Smith – Men In Black (7.3)

Will Smith laid his musical persona to rest years ago, as the musician has put all of his energy into acting, but no other movie thrust a rapper into the limelight better than Men In Black.

The movie has become a classic that’s got itself three sequels and spawned a ton of inferior knock-off movies. Not only that, but Smith combined the two art forms by releasing the insanely catchy theme tune for the movie.

8 Zendaya – Spider-Man: Far From Home (7.5)

Starting her music career at just 14 years old, Zendaya has had a ton of hits on the charts, but she is now more known for playing MJ, Peter Parker’s romantic interest, in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

The actress has appeared in two movies in the MCU and is currently shooting the third, but the best of the lot is Spider-Man: Far From Home, in which she stole the show and had a ton of great quotes of her own.

7 Lady GaGa – A Star Is Born (7.6)

Lady GaGa was experimenting with acting long before A Star Is Born broke box office records. The musician was using music videos to create long epics with narratives that went much deeper than the ordinary music video, and then she went on to star in one of the best seasons of American Horror Story.

But her role in A Star Is Born helped it become one of the best remakes of the 2010s, and she was even nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress.

6 Justin Timberlake – The Social Network (7.7)

Though he still remains massively relevant in the music industry and is still making hits, Justin Timberlake has a foot in both camps, as he still scores starring roles in blockbuster movies.

But before he was the leading man of Trolls, Timberlake played Napster founder Sean Parker in The Social Network, one of the best David Fincher movies filled with colorful dialogue, and Timberlake is responsible for some of the movie’s most memorable quotes.

5 Jared Leto – Dallas Buyers Club (8.0)

Being a member of the rock band 30 Seconds To Mars, Jared Leto has had a significant amount of success in both the music and movie industry. But it’s safe to say that Leto is a much better actor than a musician, as the critical consensus on his band’s music speaks for itself, as do the many awards he’s won for acting.

The peak of his career came in 2013 when he played Rayon, an AIDS patient in Dallas Buyers Club.

4 Bjork – Dancer In The Dark (8.0)

Though Bjork has been keeping a low profile as of late, the Icelandic native has been releasing albums since she was 11 years old. The singer released several iconic records over the 90s and 2000s and given her avant-garde musical style, it only made sense for her to work with director Lars Von Trier.

Together, they made Dancer In The Dark, a melodrama about a woman with a degenerative eye condition, and she was even nominated for an Academy Award for her performance.

3 Jamie Foxx – Django Unchained (8.4)

Jamie Foxx is a man of many indisputable talents, as he isn’t just an actor, and he isn’t just a musician, but he’s a comedian too! Having released several albums in the 2000s and most famously featuring on Kanye West’s “Gold Digger,” Foxx was concurrently starring in comedies and action movies, but his best movie of them all is Django Unchained.

Django is the highest-grossing Quentin Tarantino movie to date, has an amazing cast including Foxx, and it has one of the best opening scenes in a western.

2 Mark Wahlberg – The Departed (8.5)

Another performer who is now much more famous for acting than he is for his history in the music industry, Mark Wahlberg, once known as Marky Mark, was a member of the hip hop group The Funky Bunch.

It’s hard to believe that it has been almost 30 years since the release of their debut album, but in that time since, Wahlberg has become one of the most bankable lead actors in Hollywood. But surprisingly enough, his best role was as a supporting character. The actor played Sargent Dignam, a foul-mouthed and short-tempered cop in The Departed, one of the best 2000s thrillers.

1 Meatloaf – Fight Club (1999) 8.8

Meat Loaf is easily the most seasoned musician of the lot, first gaining recognition in the late 70s with his album Bat Out Of Hell and its two follow-ups. Though the musician transitioned into acting fairly early in his career, he barely got any recognition for his role in Spice World.

Though it’d look a lot different if it was recast today, Fight Club saw Meat Loaf cast as Robert Paulson, a former wrestler with testicular cancer, and it was an amazing performance in one of the greatest movies of all time.