I remember seeing this when it opened at The Leicester Square Theatre (I noticed when I was there last week that it's been knocked down), I really wanted to like it, but I thought it was awful & still do. And probably a bad time to say it, but...Bowie was a terrible actor (well you can't be good at everything).
I remember seeing this when it opened at The Leicester Square Theatre (I noticed when I was there last week that it's been knocked down), I really wanted to like it, but I thought it was awful & still do. And probably a bad time to say it, but...Bowie was a terrible actor (well you can't be good at everything).
Indeed. Terrible actor. Like a lot of pop stars, he confused "just standing there looking fab" for a performance - no craft of technique required. Wrong!
Having said that, I think The Man WFTE is a very interesting and pretty unique film, and Bowie's casting is, perhaps for the one and only time, entirely appropriate.
I remember seeing this when it opened at The Leicester Square Theatre (I noticed when I was there last week that it's been knocked down)....
Holy crap, that was a bit of a shock. I visited London a couple of months ago and was about a block away but did not have time to step into Leicester Square, as I normally do, to pay my respects to the cinemas remaining there.
Lo and behold, the Leicester Square Theatre (which I confess I last stepped inside in 1988, before it was split in two and renamed the Odeon West End) was turned into a pile of rubble in summer 2015:
Finding Bowie a competent actor or not is a matter of opinion, not fact.
I find that there are times his acting work is a bit too influenced by his prior training to "play to the balcony", so to speak. His more successful performances tend to be the ones where he plays inward and keeps it small. But as a performer, he's a sight better actor than a lot of "actual" actors out there.
Generally speaking, the performances that end up on screen are the artistic choices of the director more than anyone else--so it is their shoulders on which the bouquets or brickbats can be laid.