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Being a rock star is hard enough for the men and women who already call that their day job. But acting like a rock star? That’s doubly hard, and when someone totally nails that gig, it’s either because they went way, way over the line doing research or they just naturally have a bit of Jagger or Joplin in them. We were hoping Rainn Wilson would join the elite great-fake-musician club. Alas, his film The Rocker falls short.

We love Rainn, but he’s no John C. Reilly, who made us believe he could have been one of the great rock ’n’ rollers in 2007’s Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story. Still, it got us thinking about some other actors who totally nailed it … as well as those who totally blew it.

 

The Best:

Christopher Guest, Michael McKean, and Harry Shearer as Spinal Tap in This Is Spinal Tap

This film has become the stuff of legend. The trio’s characters — Nigel Tufnel, David St. Hubbins, and Derek Smalls — have become so ingrained in pop culture that many people forget they’re a fake band. Can you name another bunch of actors who get asked to play Live Earth? Here's Tap's early incarnation, the New Originals. They play every 1960s British Invasion cliché to perfection.

Gary Oldman as Sid Vicious in Sid & Nancy

If you’ve seen file footage of the Pistols’ perpetually shambolic bass man, the eerie way in which Oldman morphs into the junkie punk icon is truly astounding. The hair, the sneer, the total disregard for personal hygiene … Sid would be proud.

 
 

Bob Geldof as Pink in Pink Floyd’s “The Wall”

This one is kind of cheating, because the Boomtown Rats singer was already sort of a rock star himself when the film came out. But the notoriously irascible Live Aid co-founder completely disappears into the role of the numb and self-loathing, eyebrow-deficient rocker slipping into a druggy death spiral.

 

Sam Riley as Ian Curtis in Control

People began to run out of superlatives to describe how perfectly this 27-year-old British actor stepped into the role of the doomed lead singer of Manchester’s Joy Division. It helped that Riley was a failed rock star who so thoroughly transformed his body and voice that many moviegoers didn’t realize it was Curtis singing the band’s songs until the closing credits rolled.

 
 

Joaquin Phoenix as Johnny Cash in Walk the Line

While Phoenix didn’t really look like Johnny Cash in the lauded biopic, there was something about his smoldering, sneering performance that perfectly captured the coiled powder keg of love, violence, and faith that was The Man in Black.

Val Kilmer as Jim Morrison in The Doors

Kilmer not only looked eerily like Morrison, but he also had the boozy, befuddled mad poet act down to a deranged science. It didn’t hurt that he looked fantastic in tight leather pants and no shirt, either.

The worst:

Val Kilmer as Jim Morrison

On the other hand, the self-indulgent Kilmer plays Morrison as a walking rock ’n’ roll cliché who swings from being ultra-cool to kind of smugly goofy.

Prince as The Kid in Graffiti Bridge

You’d think that playing a thinly veiled version of yourself would be pretty easy, right? You’d be wrong. The Purple One is a mumbly, meandering mess in most of his 1980s vanity films, but none of them is more excruciating than Bridge, which has a plotline as skinny as the singer’s tiny waist. You know it’s bad when one of the most exciting singers in rock history bores you to tears.

 


 

 

Mark Wahlberg as Chris Cole in Rock Star

There was only one way for Marky Mark to go in his portrayal of a guy who goes from being the singer of a tribute band to the actual singer of that band (the character is a fictionalized version of onetime Judas Priest fan-turned-singer Tim “Ripper” Owens). That way was over-the-top, and unfortunately for Wahlberg, his eager-eyed, goofy take on metal mania only got him halfway there. Wahlberg was way more believable as Boogie Nights’ Dirk Diggler in the scene where he’s trying to record his horrible album.

 
 

Kevin Spacey as Bobby Darin in Beyond the Sea

Maybe it’s because Darin comes off as such a jerk, but most of the time you just get the feeling that you’re watching the fussy, fey Spacey stretching to be the suave, lady-killing climber Darin.

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