Most of us could clear out a room by attempting to sing a karaoke rendition of “I Got You Babe” or giving a dramatic reading of Jack Nicholson’s courtroom speech from “A Few Good Men.” But a handful of artists have excelled at both music and acting. For these five singers turned actors, performing on-screen is not just something they dabbled in, but rather an entire second career. Some such musicians became arguably more renowned for their movie roles than for their exploits in music.
Frank Sinatra
Ol’ Blue Eyes was a well-established music star when he moved into acting, and the singer eventually “became admired for a screen persona distinctly tougher than his smooth singing style,” said All About Jazz. Starting with lighthearted musicals like “Anchors Aweigh,” Sinatra gradually took on meatier roles, including in 1953’s “From Here to Eternity.” Perhaps his most memorable turn was in 1962’s “The Manchurian Candidate,” a thriller in which Sinatra plays Captain Bennett Marco, who thwarts an assassination attempt by an unwitting communist sleeper agent. Sinatra here gave a “reasoned and in many ways more mature performance than he has ever done before,” said The Hollywood Reporter.
Barbra Streisand
Broadway star Barbra Streisand made her film debut in 1968’s “Funny Girl,” an adaptation of the stage musical she also starred in, and won the Academy Award for Best Actress. Streisand later played the idealistic young leftist Katie Morosky in the bittersweet 1973 romance “The Way We Were,” acting opposite Robert Redford as her more conservative love interest Hubbell Gardiner. In that film, Streisand proved herself to be the “brightest, quickest female actress in movies today,” said Roger Ebert at the time. She was able to inhabit her “characters with a fierce energy” yet also be “touchingly vulnerable.” Streisand has been choosy about her cinematic roles since then, last appearing in 2012’s “Guilt Trip.”
Cher
Cher rose to fame as one half of the musical duo Sonny & Cher alongside her first husband, Sonny Bono. But in the 1980s, she branched out into serious acting starting with the biographical drama “Silkwood” (1983). She later won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance as Loretta Castorini in the 1987 romantic comedy “Moonstruck,” a movie that “celebrates the family over the romantic couple” and felt “completely true to people as they are: ridiculous and passionate, in search of answers and solutions, and taking what they can get,” said B. D. McClay at The New Yorker. After starring in the 1990 comedy “Mermaids,” Cher refocused her career on music and has only appeared in a handful of feature films since then, most recently 2018’s “Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again.”
Ice Cube
Ice Cube is currently under fire for starring in quite possibly the worst-reviewed film of all time, Amazon Prime’s “War of the Worlds” adaptation. But prior to this seeming misstep, the former lead rapper for pioneering hip-hop band N.W.A. had fashioned a decades-long acting career for himself that includes a number of standout performances.
Ice Cube played a gang member in director John Singleton’s 1991 debut “Boyz n the Hood,” a heartbreaking film that “showed how white supremacy set the conditions that ended in neighborhoods devastated by crime and, ultimately, violence,” said Lawrence Ware at The New York Times. He later went on to star in the 1995 comedy classic “Friday,” a stoner buddy comedy set in South Central Los Angeles.
Mark Wahlberg
People of a certain age might still think of Mark Wahlberg as Marky Mark from the late ’80s and early ’90s boy bands New Kids on the Block or Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch. But Wahlberg has since enjoyed a long and successful career as an A-list Hollywood actor, first breaking out in the role of porn star Dirk Diggler in Paul Thomas Anderson’s 1997 drama “Boogie Nights.” In Martin Scorsese’s critically acclaimed 2006 thriller “The Departed,” Wahlberg played Sergeant Dignam, a Boston Police sergeant who sends new recruit Billy Costigan (Leonardo DiCaprio) to infiltrate a mafia organization headed by Frank Costello (Jack Nicholson). Wahlberg, a “charismatic, always underrated natural,” stands out in Scorsese’s “terrific cops-and-mobsters tale,” said Lisa Schwarzbaum at Entertainment Weekly.
It’s not often that someone is born with both of these rare skill sets
