The Worst Rock-Star Actors of All Time

Starring Vanilla Ice, MickJagger, Mariah Carey, Sting, Madonna, Master P, Neil Diamond and Jon Bon Jovi.Music by Keanu Reeves.Written by Joe Eszterhas.Based on an idea by Some Cokehead.Produced by A Guy Who will Never See His Money Again.Directed by The Seventeenth Person We Asked.

25. Dr. Dre
Washout
Day job: Medically unqualified hip-hop overlord
But on screen: “I can’t believe this nigga!” Snoop Dogg says of costar Dre at one point in The Wash, the Dr.’s first and last starring role. The audience can’t help but agree. Apparently choosing at random what facial expression to wear, his character — a car wash manager — greets good news with a dour scowl and bad with the maniacal grin of a methed-up lottery winner.
Worst Moment: The Wash (50th min.): To convey his lust for a foxy car wash client, Dre flashes the pained expression of someone trying to evacuate an open umbrella from his colon.

24. Sting
King of Pain, Pompousness
Day job: Environmentally concerned former Police-man.
But on screen: Visibly smug. In films as disparate as Quadrophenia and Plenty, you can actually see Sting thinking what a brilliant actor he is — even as he delivers lines in which punctuation has slipped its moorings (“Who is this. Traitor?” in Dune) and pulls facial expressions last seen during the silent era.
Worst Moment: Dune (89th min.): He runs the gamut of his skills (“All I can. See is an Atreides that I. Want. To kill.” etc.) while wearing nothing but a pair of blue plastic underpants.

23. Flea
Pip-squeak Punk
Day job: Pug-faced Chili Peppers’ bass dynamo
But on screen: The human Red Bull employs his spazzy speed-freak-in-a-home-for-the-criminally-insane acting skills for myriad films —including 1983’s Suburbia and as a Shakespeare-spouting Portland hustler in My Own Private Idaho. And, in perhaps his finest role, the voice of the feral, barely bathroom-trained wild child Donnie on the Wild Thornberrys.
Worst Moment: The Big Lebowski (103rd min.): Wearing a WWII German helmet, he’s beaten up by John Goodman and crawls across the asphalt with his pants down.

22. Prince
Small Blunder
Day job: Pocket-sized pop genius
But on screen: The loosely autobiographical Purple Rain (1984) was a hit, but as gigolo romance Under the Cherry Moon (1986) demonstrated, decent tunes could only cover so much of Prince’s unconvincing mumbling, a point driven home by the silly Purple Rain sequel Graffiti Bridge (1990).
Worst Moment: Purple Rain (52nd min.): Prince’s girlfriend walks out after he slaps her for joining a rival band. Prince looks at the floor and blinks a lot.


21. Ozzy Osbourne
Cracked Actor
Day job: Grizzled dark lord of metal
But on screen: Ozzy knows his limitations, avoiding jobs that require memorizing a lot of dialogue — or anything much at all. Aside from the creatively “ironic” casting that sees him play a straight-laced evangelist in 1986’s schlock-horror farrago Trick or Treat, he’s largely stuck to appearing in substandard comedies as “Himself” — in a visual shorthand for pantomime evil.
Worst Moment: Trick or Treat (40th min.): A befuddled Ozzy fluffs his lines while quoting a lyric he finds particularly distasteful: “Gonna guide my long steel missile down on your love channel.”

20. Run DMC
It’s Tricky…to Read a Line
Day job: From Hollis, Queens, hip-hop’s pioneering superstars
But on screen: Even the Fat Boys upstage them in 1985’s Krush Groove. Joseph “Run” Simmons’s idea of an ad-lib is saying “um” a lot. Meanwhile, Darryl “DMC” McDaniels has a hard time looking awake, much less reciting his boilerplate lines. And they’re thoroughly unconvincing in Tougher Than Leather, a 1988 crime thriller thick with dead air.
Worst Moment: Tougher Than Leather (5th min.): Jason “Jam Master Jay” Mizell recites a boring, overlong monologue about getting a blow job…in a nightmare.

19. The Spice Girls
Woeful Wanna-bes
Day job: Progenitors of overtly sexual teen pop
But on screen: In 1998’s Spiceworld, Scary, Posh, Baby, Ginger and Sporty lob clunker lines with zero comic timing and have spontaneous pillow fights while riding around in a huge Union Jack–painted bus driven by Meat Loaf. Along the way, they meet alien fans in latex costumes and all the while try hard to seem oblivious to their waning fame.
Worst Moment: Spiceworld (55th min.): On a speedboat spinning around the mucky Thames, the girls sing a charmless cover of “My Boy Lollipop"

18. Ja Rule
Thug Lite
Day job: Gravel-voiced MC and duet expert
But on screen: Apparently afraid of squandering more street cred, Rule tacks the word “man” onto his every line in the 2002 Steven Seagal action vehicle Half Past Dead. His permanent blank scowl is the most memorable thing about his Fast and the Furious cameo, but, incurably stiff, he’s inadvertently fine playing a Secret Service agent in 2003’s Scary Movie 3. Worst Moment:: Half Past Dead (8th min.): Rule gives Seagal a lesson in ebonics, teaching him how to say “aiight.”

17. Mick Jagger
Leatherface!
Day job: Priapic leader of the greatest rock & roll band in the world
But on screen: Having successfully played himself in his debut, 1970’s Performance, Jagger has played himself ever since, regardless of whether the script stipulates Australian outlaw (Ned Kelly), futuristic bounty hunter (Freejack) or concentration camp transvestite (Bent).
Worst Moment:: Freejack (44th min.): Taunts fugitive time-traveler Emilio Estevez during a car chase — “I hate to tell you this, but you’re speeding! Ha ha ha ha ha ha!” — in a way that could only be less terrifying if delivered by a sock puppet.

16. Beanie Sigel
Gangsta Hack
Day job: Mumbly, gun-toting rapper and convicted felon
But on screen: Same
Worst Moment: State Property (42nd min.): In an unholy cross between Knute Rockne’s “Win one for the Gipper” pep talk and DeNiro’s baseball bat scene from The Untouchables, the paunchy Beanie — playing a gangster unimaginatively named Beans — semicoherently preaches loyalty to his crew. He then rewards his soon-to-be-violently murdered underlings with ice and hookers.

15. Roger Daltrey
We Won’t be Fooled Again
Day job: Dorian Gray–like lead singer of the Who
But on screen: Made an appropriately glassy-eyed screen debut as a deaf, dumb and blind kid in Tommy in 1975. He’s gradually added “mugging” and “shouting” and “looking like a formaldehyde-preserved drag queen” to his thespian repertoire.
Worst Moment: Vampirella (30th min.): Daltrey sports a horrendous mullet and fangs as Vlad, an evil vampire from outer space. As he and the titular Vampirella are captured by vampire hunters, Vlad backhands her and sneers, “You set me up, you bitch!”

14. James Taylor
Never Trust a Hippie
Day job: Sensitive, heroin-loving, soft-rock troubadour
But on screen: In 1971’s Two-Lane Blacktop, his first and last feature film role, the fantastically inert Taylor inexplicably muffs the few lines that the script allows him and spends the bulk of his screen time staring blankly from behind the wheel of a souped-up ’55 Chevy.
Worst Moment: Two-Lane Blacktop (32nd min.): In a semilucid attempt to woo a comely hitchhiker, Sweet Baby James mumbles his way through a mercifully short speech about cicadas.

13. Michael Hutchence
Australian for “Can’t Act”
Day job: Late INXS frontman and Australian moptop
But on screen: As the star of 1987’s Dogs in Space, Hutchence slithers around the floor of the huge dirtbag house he shares with 40-odd other post-punk fools in Melbourne’s ’80s bohemian scene. When he isn’t growling or making pouty faces, Hutchence sings in a band and lovingly caresses his own filthy hair — just like in real life!
Worst Moment: Dogs in Space (48th min.): Hutchence creepily play-acts his future druggie-sex ways as he injects his girlfriend with heroin using a leopard-print tie.

12. Ringo Starr
Help!
Day job: British pop drummer
But on screen: Compared to George Harrison, Ringo may have been “the funny one.” But compared to anyone else who ever staggered across a movie set, he was hammy and awkward. Despite an absurd range of roles — from the titular Caveman to the Pope in Lisztomania — he remains the cinematic equivalent of that embarrassing uncle who tells the same joke every Thanksgiving.
Worst Moment: Sextette (54th min.): Ringo is less believable as a boorish film director than his octogenarian costar Mae West is as a vampy sex symbol.

11. Peter Frampton
Barely Comes Alive
Day job: Talking-guitar-wielding ’70s rock idol
But on screen: Cast at the height of his mega-fame in the lead role of a small-town, rock-star hero in 1978’s ludicrous and almost entirely dialogue-free, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, Frampton was forced to fall back on his powers of mime. Unfortunately, he didn’t have any.
Worst Moment: Sgt. Pepper’s… (23rd min.): In a scene designed to illustrate the depravities of the record industry, Frampton is slipped a mickey and hallucinates an orgy involving costars the Bee Gees.

10. Master P
Less Than Masterful
Day job: Multimillionaire Dirty South nabob, Lil’ Romeo’s papa
But on screen: Look — you don’t need to be Pacino to know you should open your mouth while acting. But Percy Miller mumbles nonstop in 1998’s I Got the Hook Up, riding a bored, monotone drawl. It’s a comedy, but his timing is as on as a five-dollar Rolex. He fares even worse as director of the constipated crime drama Hot Boyz.
Worst Moment: I Got the Hook Up (19th min.): In a culturally sensitive “Engrish” accent, P attempts to order a cheeseburger at a Japanese restaurant.

9. Gene Simmons
All Tongue, No Teeth
Day job: Kiss bassist and self-proclaimed god of thunder
But on screen: Simmons says making movies is like having teeth pulled — which, coincidentally, is also what it’s like watching him act. Cast as the supposedly menacing heavy in such woeful mid-’80s actioners as Runaway and Wanted: Dead or Alive, the bassist’s barely audible mumbling and sad narcoleptic demeanor make him seem about as lethal as a discarded teddy bear.
Worst Moment: Wanted: Dead or Alive (5th min.): While cutting the throat of a Hasidic Jew, Simmons looks in danger of falling into a mid-slash coma.

8. Neil Diamond
Oy Vey!
Day job: Bouffant-haired god of ’70s soft-rock
But on screen: Starring in a baffling remake of The Jazz Singer as a Jewish cantor living a secret life as a crooner, Diamond is either hilariously wooden or simply numb from the shock of watching costar Laurence Olivier’s berserk performance as his Orthodox father.
Worst Moment: The Jazz Singer (81st min.): In the studio, Diamond throws the least convincing rock-star tantrum in history. “Come on man! What happened to the groove? Don’t tell me to cool it, man!” etc.

7. Vanilla Ice
Hollywood Honky
Day job: Former whiteboy rap icon
But on screen: In 1991, most rappers were seen as the scourges of suburbia; Vanilla Ice wasn’t one of them. Which makes his film vehicle Cool as Ice so thoroughly absurd — a walking wigger parody, his right eyebrow is botoxed into a permanent arch, and his ebonics make Ali G sound like DMX. By 2002’s The New Guy, he was downgraded to cameo status as an angry record store clerk with a rattail goatee.
Worst Moment: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II (69th min.): Ice does the running man and raps “go ninja, go ninja, go!”

6. Britney Spears
Blank-Stare Bombshell
Day job: Semiretired Mrs. Kevin Federline
But on screen: All-American gal in search of a dream and the mom she never knew, in Crossroads (2002). Has three facial expressions: head on side spaniel-style (sad), nose wrinkled (“We’re rockin’!”) and I, Robot blankness (default).
Worst Moment: Crossroads (59th min.): Britney catches up with the mommy who left her when she was three, only to be rejected again. Years of rigorous Mouseketeer stage training are discredited as confusion judders across Spears’s vacant countenance like a poorly fitted garage door.

5. Elivs Presley
Invented Rock, Redefined Schlock
Day job: King of rock & roll
But on screen: Early promise in Jailhouse Rock and King Creole decimated by 27 abominable ’60s films. In particular Tickle Me, Easy Come, Easy Go and Harum Scarum seem to have been written and directed by people who actively hated him. To his credit, Presley appears visibly ashamed of himself throughout.
Worst Moment:: Charro! (2nd min.): The point, immediately following the title song in Elvis’s lone noncrooning role, when we realize that for the next 90 minutes there will be no other musical interlude to divert us from this strained melodrama.

4. Jon Bon Jovi
Gives Acting a Bad Name
Day job: Hair-metal Renaissance man
But on screen: Jon has made the most of his rugged good looks and ripped physique. As such, he is the uncomplicated beefcake of choice when the likes of Jason Patric are unavailable, too expensive or just not interested.
Worst Moment:: The Leading Man (36th min.): Planning to seduce a playwright’s wife, Bon Jovi discovers a dildo hidden in her underwear drawer while doing his research. Jon gamely tries to express “knowing,” “sad” and “smug” but manages only “confused.”

3. Mariah Carey
All That Glitters…
Day job: The melismatically trilling queen of Long Island
But on screen: Neither her appearance as an opera star in The Bachelor or as a zonky homeowner on MTV Cribs prepared the public for Glitter, the semiautobiographical masterpiece of bloated pop-diva vanity. The movie bombed, the soundtrack tanked and Carey snapped, handing out Popsicles on TRL before retreating from the public for a rest-cure.
Worst Moment:: Glitter (36th min): After their first date, Carey, in bed with her sweaty boyfriend, says, "I just have a little bit of a tough time trusting people."

2. Bob Dylan
You Don’t Need a Weatherman to Know…He Blows
Day job: Voice of a generation
But on screen: Dylan is mesmerizing playing an enigmatic rock star in real life. But when playing a rock star in a work of fiction where his character should resemble an actual human being, his gnomic persona and constipated-looking visage are disastrous. Remarkably, he’s now proven this twice — in 1987’s Hearts of Fire and 2003’s Bob-scripted Masked and Anonymous.
Worst Moment:: Masked and Anonymous (25th min.): When Giovanni Ribisi is shot dead right in front of him, Bob lets his moustache do the emoting.

1. Madonna
Mama Don’t Act
Day job: The most famous woman on Earth
But on screen: Invariably cast as an irresistible femme fatale — Breathless Mahoney in Dick Tracy, Susan in Desperately Seeking Susan — yet cannot “do” sexy. Instead, she adopts the glassy-eyed expression of someone on a cocktail of prescription drugs and delivers her lines as if reading aloud from the letters of a stalker.
Worst Moment:: Body of Evidence (13th min.): “Have you ever seen animals make love, Frank?” she asks a baffled-looking Willem Dafoe, sounding less like a seductress and more like your 7th-grade biology teacher.