It’s easy to see why they thought it would be a good idea.
After all, if you can captivate tens of thousands of screaming fans, surely you can carry a movie, right? And what is being a rock star if not playing a character – strutting, preening, throwing out lines like they’re lyrics? In theory, it should be a match made in showbiz heaven.
In practice… well, let’s just say the results are often spectacularly awful. From Mick Jagger lumbering through sci-fi nonsense to Ozzy Osbourne stumbling through some Halloween mumbo-jumbo, these are performances that make you question if someone accidentally handed them a script instead of a guitar. David Bowie may have commanded a fantastical labyrinth, but even he had his off moments.
And Ringo Starr as a prehistoric proto-human? Let’s not even go there. Here are the rock stars whose movie careers hit the wrong note.
1. Ringo Starr: Caveman (1981)
Easily the worst film in which any former Beatle appeared, ‘Caveman’ is an extraordinary folly. A slapstick comedy written and directed by Carl Gottlieb, it casts the former Fab Four tub-thumper as scrawny caveman Atouk, who lusts after the mate (Barbara Bach) of his tribe’s leader and finds himself banished.
The film 'dialogue' comprises made-up 'caveman language'. Some lucky audiences were supplied with translations. 'Worth about half-an-hour of anybody’s time,' noted The Guardian. 'Unfortunately, it runs 97 minutes.' Still, the film worked wonders for Ringo’s love life. A year later, he and Bach were married.
2. Ozzy Osbourne: Trick or Treat (1986)
To be fair to Ozzy, he never saw himself as a great thespian and generally restricted himself to the full-time role of playing Ozzy Osbourne. But he was clearly tempted by the opportunity to get his own back on his tormentors by being cast as a televangelist leading a crusade against the evils of heavy metal in this tame slice of Halloween horror hokum.
3. Bob Dylan: Hearts of Fire (1987)
Welsh director Richard Marquand’s most famous credit is undoubtedly 1983's Return of the Jedi. Next after that came the 1985 hit thriller Jagged Edge. And next... a flop of monumental proportions. For Bob Dylan, whose mystifying 1978 film Renaldo and Clara proved to be a four-hour creative and commercial disaster, Hearts of Fire was further evidence that his talents lay solely in music.
The Bobster plays a rock star who gets caught in a love triangle involving young singer Fiona Flanagan and a woefully miscast Rupert Everett (playing a British popster) before eventually fleeing to his chicken farm. Of interest mainly because it was partly filmed on location in the UK (notably Bristol and London), Hearts of Fire is a daft, hammy mess. Alas, Marquand died shortly before the film was released.
4. KISS: KISS Meets the Phantom of the Park (1978)
By the late 1970s, KISS mania was at its peak in the USA. And the merchandising went through the roof, with more than 2,500 licensed products. Eventually, fans could even choose to be buried in a KISS Kasket, as the late former Pantera guitarist Dimebag Darrell was.
Little wonder the band felt invincible. They must have assumed that everything they touched would turn to filthy lucre. So they would have taken little persuading that they, or at least their onstage characters, could become movie stars too, despite their complete lack of acting talent. And so one of the worst films of all time was born.
The plot – our rockin’ heroes must use their superpowers to prevent a mad amusement park creator from unleashing a false KISS – was pure Scooby-Doo, a fact underlined by the fact that the film was produced by Hanna-Barbera. Then there was the fact that the film had virtually no budget, as it was conceived as a TV movie in the US.
Guitarist Ace Frehley had little dialogue other than “Ack!” but fared better than drummer Peter Criss, whose dialogue was dubbed. Frehley later stated that he and Criss were both 'loaded' on booze and cocaine while filming took place. For years afterwards, no one was permitted to mention the film in the band’s presence.
5. Mick Jagger: Freejack (1992)
To be fair to Sir Mick, his earliest stab at professional acting, in Nic Roeg’s Performance, was excellent. But then he was playing a rock star, which was presumably no great stretch.
By the early 1990s, Jagger seemed eager to return to the big screen, beginning with this poorly received science-fiction flick, based on the highly-regarded novel Immortality, Inc by Robert Sheckley. It’s set in a suitably futuristic 2009, where ‘bonejacker’ mercenaries travel back in time to snatch healthy folks at the moment of death to supply fresh new bodies for the ailing super-rich. Critics were cruel, the film flopped at the box office, and Jagger’s co-star Anthony Hopkins later dismissed it as 'terrible'.
6. Harry Nilsson, Ringo Starr and John Bonham: Son of Dracula (1974)
Ringo Starr (again) starred alongside his drinking buddy, American singer-songwriter Harry Nilsson, in this dreadful 1974 horror film, which has never been released on video or DVD. Billed as 'the first rock and roll Dracula movie' and nothing to do with the 1943 Lon Chaney film of the same title, it casts Nilsson as Count Downe, son of the late Count Dracula, who yearns to become mortal.
Led Zeppelin’s Bonzo Bonham plays the drummer in Downe’s rock band. Legendary director Freddie Francis (he of Hammer Horror classics Paranoiac, The Evil of Frankenstein and Dracula Has Risen from the Grave) 'opted out' after filming was completed and left the final cut to Ringo, who has reportedly forbidden its release in any other format.
7. Phil Collins: Buster (1988)
Former stage school kid Phil enjoyed early roles as a schoolboy in A Hard Day’s Night, as a ‘vulgarian child’ in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and as a nipper in the Children’s Film Foundation film Calamity the Cow. He also makes the briefest of appearances as an ice cream seller in the excellent early Jenny Agutter flick I Start Counting.
But this sanitised biopic of Great Train Robber Buster Edwards proved a poor fit for Phil's talents. His lovable cheeky chappie persona didn’t really work when playing a violent criminal, as he himself recognised when the subsequent controversy caused him to advise Prince Charles and Princess Diana to cancel their attendance at the film’s premiere.
To add to Phil’s crimes against humanity, his slowed-down cover of the sugary Sixties hit ‘A Groovy Kind of Love’, from the film’s soundtrack, reached number one on the UK singles chart.
8. Paul McCartney: Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales (2017)
Of course, The Frog Song was unforgivable but the ‘80s animation for which it was composed is a short film and McCartney himself doesn’t actually appear in it, so this doesn’t really count. Dead Men Tell No Tales is a different matter, though the fact that so few people seem to remember that he was in it works in his favour.
McCartney appears briefly as Captain Jack Sparrow’s lookalike uncle Jack – and gets to sing an old sailor song in the film’s most unnecessary cameo. The character is named after McCartney’s own Uncle Jack.
9. David Bowie: Labyrinth (1986)
Of course, Bowie’s otherworldly persona worked well in films like The Man Who Fell to Earth, for which he justly won awards. But in this Jim Henson creation from 1986, written by former Python Terry Jones, he was nothing short of ridiculous (although some will try to persuades you that Labyrinth is, in fact, a 'cult classic'. Don't listen to them).
Equipped with a daft Tina Turner wig and a trouser bulge that some may consider inappropriate for a children’s film, Bowie plays the Goblin King, who abducts the baby half-brother of teenager Jennifer Connelly. Henson reportedly went into something of a decline when the film flopped at the box office.
10. Flea: Back to the Future Parts II and III (1989/1990)
The Red Hot Chili Peppers bassist (real name Michael Balzary) has long pursued a parallel career as an actor, with creditable performances in the likes of ‘Suburbia’, ‘Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas’, ‘The Big Lebowski’ and ‘Baby Driver’. He also got to play pivotal roles in the last two ‘Back to the Future’ movies, though he later described Part II as 'a multi-million-dollar piece of trash' and expressed dissatisfaction with his performance in it.
11. Prince: Graffiti Bridge (1990)
Prince’s Graffiti Bridge is a fascinating disaster – ambitious, stylish, and utterly incoherent, a reminder that musical genius doesn’t automatically translate into screen charisma or narrative clarity. Intended as a spiritual sequel to Purple Rain, it instead feels like Prince trying to remake his own myth while simultaneously directing, starring, preaching, flirting, and composing an entire soundtrack.
The result is a film so overloaded with ideas that none of them land. Prince’s performance, normally magnetic onstage, becomes oddly weightless on camera: soft-spoken, spacey, and dramatically inert. Scenes drift past in a wash of neon smoke, mysticism, moral lessons, and half-baked plot threads that go nowhere.
Even the presence of talented co-stars can’t anchor the bewildering tone. What’s left is a vanity project in the purest sense – lavish, self-indulgent, and painfully unaware of how dull and muddled it often is.
12. Status Quo: Bula Quo! (2013)
The making of Bula Quo! is one of those strange, sun-bleached tales that could only happen when a veteran rock band says 'why not?' instead of 'should we?' Conceived as a loose, tropical caper to mark Status Quo’s 50th anniversary, the film was shot in Fiji after the band fell in love with the location during a tour.
What followed was a chaotic mix of slapstick, action, and travelogue fluff, with Francis Rossi and Rick Parfitt gamely delivering lines they clearly wished were lyrics instead. The result is harmless, hokey, and instantly forgettable – one of rock’s least essential cinematic detours.
13. Keith Moon: That’ll Be the Day (1973)
The Who's volatile drummer Keith Moon had the manic charisma of someone who lived life like a perpetual encore, but that didn’t automatically translate into screen craft. In That’ll Be the Day, Moon essentially plays a version of himself turned up to eleven – chaotic, unpredictable, and forever on the brink of doing something deranged.
It’s entertaining in the same way it’s entertaining to watch a washing machine spin with the door open: fun, but you know disaster is coming. His line delivery is erratic, his reactions baffling, and subtlety simply doesn’t exist in his universe. The result is a performance both memorable and completely wrong for the film’s tone.
14. The Bee Gees: Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (1978)
In 1978 the Bee Gees were at the height of their disco-era power, yet in Sgt. Pepper’s, they appear stranded – three enormously talented musicians trapped inside a kaleidoscopic nightmare of bad direction and questionable plotting. Their expressions veer between glazed, confused, and politely horrified, as though they’ve realised too late what they’ve signed up for.
The brothers Gibb can handle soaring harmonies, but not the demands of comic timing, dramatic tension, or even basic reaction shots. Their acting is so stiff it turns an already bizarre film into a fever dream of polyester, forced whimsy, and emotional vacancy. It’s painful, but in a strangely hypnotic way.
15. Sting: Dune (1984)
Sting’s brief performance in David Lynch's Dune has become legendary mostly for its sheer oddness. As Feyd-Rautha, he barely speaks, but when he does, it’s with the intensity of a man convinced eyebrows are a valid acting technique. The rest of the time he struts, smirks, or stands around wearing a metallic codpiece that does most of the heavy lifting.
His presence feels less like a character and more like a rock star on an alien fashion runway. There’s no depth, no menace – just glam-rock theatrics trapped in a desert epic. The result is a cameo that’s unforgettable but not for any of the intended reasons.
16. Meat Loaf: Roadie (1980)
With a voice big enough to flatten buildings, Meat Loaf always seemed larger than life – just not necessarily on film. Roadie tries to harness his brawny charm in a light comedy, but the results are uneven at best. Meat Loaf’s natural warmth comes through, but his line delivery wobbles between hesitant mumbling and sudden bursts of cartoonish enthusiasm.
The film needs fast-paced farce; he gives it stop-start chaos. He’s charismatic, but not quite in control, as though he’s improvising the entire performance and hoping for the best. Roadie isn’t the worst rock-star movie misstep – but it’s definitely not the breakout Hollywood imagined.
17. Roger Daltrey: Lisztomania (1975)
The Who’s frontman Roger Daltrey stars as Franz Liszt in Ken Russell’s flamboyant musical biopic Lisztomania. Daltrey’s charisma as a rock singer doesn’t fully translate to playing a 19th-century composer, and his performance is often overshadowed by Russell’s over-the-top direction. With exaggerated gestures, occasional deadpan delivery, and moments of unintentional comedy, Daltrey’s acting comes across as confused and uneven, cementing the film’s reputation as a cult curiosity rather than a successful rock-to-screen crossover.
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