Rockin' Roles: How Famous Actors Learned to Play Famous Musicians

Jersey Boys star John Lloyd Young had plenty of experience replicating the silvery tones of Frankie Valli. A Tony winner, Young played the Four Seasons singer 1,400 times on stage in the Broadway and London productions of Jersey Boys before crooning his way into the new Clint Eastwood-directed film version. Not every actor tasked with playing a famous singer onscreen is able to enjoy that kind of extensive preparation. Here’s how the stars of some other musical biopics got in tune.  

The Buddy Holly Story (1978)

Star turn: Gary Busey as bespectacled ’50s rocker and unlikely sex symbol, Buddy Holly.
Show-stopping moment: Hired to perform Harlem’s legendary Apollo theater under the mistaken impression that he and his backing band the Crickets are black, Holly ends up breaking barriers by bringing the Apollo crowd to their feet with a spirited rendition of “Rave On.”
How he prepared: When it came to getting into character, Busey found that the clothes really did make the man. As he said on the Canadian TV series Saturday Night at the Movies in 2003: “When they gave me that permanent and put those glasses on me and darkened my hair and gave me those dorky-looking clothes from the ’50s, I could not find Gary Busey in the mirror.”

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La Bamba (1987)

Star turn: Lou Diamond Phillips as Chicano singer Ritchie Valens, who perished on the same fateful flight that claimed the lives of Buddy Holly and the Big Bopper.
Show-stopping moment: Ritchie’s climactic in-concert rendition of the title track is well worth the wait.
How he prepared: In a 2012 interview with The A.V. Club, Phillips said that Valens’ family was key in helping him fill out the “blank slate” that was the enigmatic singer. They didn’t even mind that he didn’t especially resemble Ritchie physically. “What the writer/director was looking for wasn’t necessarily someone who was a carbon copy of him. He was trying to capture Ritchie’s heart, Ritchie’s optimism — that sort of infectious personality and warmth that the young man had.”

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The Doors (1991)

Star turn: Val Kilmer as ’60s rock god Jim Morrison, frontman for the psychedelic band the Doors.
Show-stopping moment: Advised before the group’s debut on The Ed Sullivan Show to alter a key lyric from “Light My Fire” lest they violate network standards, Morrison goes right ahead and sings the line (“Girl we couldn’t get much higher”) as is, even adding a “Yeah!” for emphasis.
How he prepared: Kilmer mastered 50 songs before production started and sang all 15 performed in the film himself (though director Oliver Stone did sweeten the final sound mix with the real-life Morrison’s voice). He also committed wholeheartedly to recreating the singer’s extreme lifestyle. “There wasn’t nothing that wasn’t attractive about it, really,” he told The Orlando Sentinel in 1991. “I was fascinated even about the things that were repulsive…You shouldn’t be afraid.”

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Selena (1997)

Star turn: Jennifer Lopez as Latin artist Selena, whose rags-to-riches career ended prematurely when she was murdered in 1995.
Show-stopping moment: A visibly overwhelmed Selena serenades a cheering crowd with one of her biggest hits, “Como La Flor.” A few bars in, she stops and raises her finger to her lips to ask for silence and the audience obliges…for a little while, anyway.
How she prepared: ”I knew I had a tough job ahead of me from the beginning, because Selena was so loved,” Lopez informed Oprah and her studio audience in a 1997 episode of The Oprah Winfrey Show, adding that her preparation was “non-stop” from the moment she landed the part. That preparation included watching Selena’s videos and listening to her music 24/7 to try and capture her essence without simply mimicking her. “You can’t become somebody—you’re acting.”

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Ray (2004)

Star turn: Jamie Foxx as groundbreaking blind bluesman (and expert Diet Pepsi pitchman) Ray Charles
Show-stopping moment: Charles croons his signature, lushly orchestrated rendition of “Georgia on My Mind.”  That’s the real Ray’s voice in that scene, by the way — Foxx tickled the ivories in the movie, but lip-synced along to Charles’s previously recorded tracks.  
How he prepared: Foxx studied at the hands of the master himself, sitting down with Charles (who died before the movie’s release) for several piano playing sessions. He also willingly donned prosthetics that kept his eyes shut for the duration of the shoot, replicating the singer’s blindness.  “Imagine having your eyes glued shut for 14 hours a day,” he said to The New York Times. “That’s your jail sentence.”  

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Walk the Line (2005)

Star turn: Reese Witherspoon plays the good girl country chanteuse June Carter, who falls for bad boy Johnny Cash, played by Joaquin Phoenix.
Show-stopping moment: Against her better judgment, June joins Johnny for a duet of “Time’s a Wastin’" that shows off their combustible chemistry.
How they prepared: Phoenix and Witherspoon sang for their respective roles, a prospect they both found daunting. “I had to do four months of rehearsals,” Witherspoon told MTV in 2004. “I had to learn to play autoharp. I had to take singing lessons. I had to record an album, which was the most challenging, horrifying experience of my life.” Phoenix, for his part seemed shocked he pulled it off at all. “I was surprised just to get through a song!” he told CNN in 2005. ” It was very strange to have to use a part of my voice that I didn’t know existed.”

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La Vie en Rose (2007)

Star turn: Marion Cotillard as world-renowned singer and French national treasure, Édith Piaf.
Show-stopping moment: In a final scene that basically won Cotillard her surprise Oscar, a stooped, de-glammed Piaf triumphantly belts her signature song “Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien.”
How she prepared: Cotillard worked so hard to mimic Piaf’s distinctive voice, she even spoke like the singer when the cameras weren’t rolling.  “It was not annoying for my friends; [but] it was unbearable for me,” she told USA Today. “When I shot the movie, off the set, my voice was more the voice of the character than mine. It took a little while for it to go up again.”

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Cadillac Records (2008)

Star turn: Beyoncé as singer-songwriter Etta James, who struggled with and drug addiction during the course of her multi-decade career.
Show-stopping moment: Given one last take to nail the ode to heartbreak “All I Could Do Is Cry,” James steps up to the mic and brings the audience — and herself — to tears.
How she prepared: Since she already had the pipes to do justice to James, Beyoncé focused on getting into the singer’s troubled mind.  “It was important for me to be raw and honest, and not be a glamorous version of Etta James,” she said to The Mirror.  “I had to think about the most painful things in my life so I could be true to this character. So I was crying for 12 hours a day and coming home very grouchy.”