Yahoo Movies 10 Musical Biopic Stars Who Did Their Own Singing: Sissy Spacek, Joaquin Phoenix, and More
There’s a trap inherent to making a musical biopic. On the one hand, there’s something undeniably thrilling and crowd-pleasing about seeing a cultural icon like Freddie Mercury, Whitney Houston, or Elvis Presley come alive on the screen. On the other hand, when audiences buy a ticket to see a movie about a famous musician, they expect to hear their songs. More importantly, they expect to hear their voices.
Music history is filled with artists whose vocal qualities have become iconic in their own right, immediately distinctive and filled with incredible personality. Think of Mercury’s bombastic, four-octave vocal range that very few people on the planet are capable of replicating. Or Houston’s soulful, gospel-inspired technique, or Presley’s often-parodied stuttering Southern drawl. It’s not only difficult for an actor cast as these artists to live up to their singing — sometimes, it’s quite literally impossible.
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For directors tasked with making a musical biopic and getting their star to embody the musician at the center, the solution to this vocal problem is often just to sidestep it entirely, by employing rigorous use of lip syncing and soundalikes. Rami Malek famously didn’t sing much of the Queen songs featured in “Bohemian Rhapsody,” instead lip syncing to both Mercury’s vocals as well as soundalike Marc Martel. Naomi Ackie, playing Houston in “I Wanna Dance With Somebody,” almost entirely lip synced to the artist’s archival recordings.
Those are two recent examples, but the practice of using lip syncing to recreate an artist’s voice on film is a common one. In her acclaimed breakthrough role in Tina Turner documentary “What’s Love Gotta Do With It,” Angela Bassett lip synced for the rock icon’s vocals. Even when you cast as a singer as a star, that doesn’t guarantee that they’re the ones singing; “Selena,” the biopic of beloved tejano star Selena Quintanilla-Pérez, cast Jennifer Lopez in the lead role, but the voice you hear during the vast majority of the concert scenes isn’t Jenny from the Block’s but the late Selena herself.
With all of these lip syncing shenanigans going on, the times where biopics do trust their leads to do their own singing feel all the more surprising. But it happens occasionally, and one prominent example is the new biopic “Back to Black,” which features “Industry” star Marisa Abela as Amy Winehouse. Winehouse, during her short career, was one of the most distinctive vocalists of her generation, with an expressive contralto voice that made her a sensation. That makes it all to easy to just use her vocals wholesale, but the Sam Taylor-Johnson film feature Abela’s own voice in its retelling of Winehouse’s life. Its a bold approach but one that, at least in theory, can lead to a more immediate and transporting performance from its central star, more concerned with embodying the character than perfect one to one recreation of the real-life icon.
With “Back to Black” out in the United Kingdom, IndieWire is taking a look at other biopics that had their lead actor step up to the recording booth. Here are 10 biopics were the stars did their own singing.
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