For many, David Bowie is synonymous with transcendent stage performances, eye-catching costumes, and an androgynous brand of cool light-years ahead of its time. But behind Bowie’s now iconic stage personas — Major Tom, Ziggy Stardust, Aladdin Sane and The Thin White Duke — lies a complicated love affair with acting that took his passion for performing from the concert stage to the silver screen.

Our latest film program celebrates the pop-culture icon’s on-screen career, ‘The Cracked Actor: Bowie on Screen’ at the Australian Cinémathèque, GOMA until 5 October 2024 celebrates some of Bowie’s most notable roles and is a rare chance to see a different side to this chameleonic performer.

The son of a cinema usher and a talent agent, it is perhaps unsurprising that, from his childhood, David Bowie (then David Jones) was an avid cinema goer. He was particularly fond of films from the 1920s German expressionist and surrealist movements, such as Robert Weine’s The Cabinet of Dr Caligari 1920, Fritz Lang’s Metropolis 1927 and Luis Buñuel’s An Andalusian Dog 1929. In 1966, Bowie’s first agent, Ken Pitt, suggested the musician move into acting, which seemed a natural progression from his existing passion for on-screen performances.

‘Labyrinth’ 1986

The following year, Bowie was cast in his first on-screen role, as a painting that comes to life, in Michael Armstrong’s short film The Image 1969. The experience ignited Bowie’s love of acting, encouraging him to develop his craft with Lynsey Kemp, a performer and choreographer trained by legendary mime artist Marcel Marceau. Fostered by Kemp, Bowie’s newfound love of mime would later surface in future stage and screen performances, including Kemp’s televised stage-play Pierrot in Turquoise (or The Looking Glass Murders) 1970, directed by Brian Mahoney; and David Mallet’s pioneering music video for Bowie’s 1980 song Ashes to Ashes. Playing in the spheres of performance art and stage craft opened a world of creative possibilities for Bowie that would gradually evolve into an entirely new form of concert performance.

‘Absolute Beginners’ 1986

Inspired by a host of now iconic pop-culture figures, including Andy Warhol, Iggy Pop and Lou Reed, Bowie embraced different facets of US counterculture and spun them together with his love of mime, cabaret performance and Japanese kabuki theatre to create the alien rockstar persona Ziggy Stardust. Explosively depicted in Brett Morgen’s psychedelically infused experimental biopic Moonage Daydream 2022, Ziggy, Bowie’s most famous character, interwove theatre, cinema and stage performance in a way never before seen by audiences, and launched Bowie’s popularity into the stratosphere. Despite the runaway success of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, this newfound notoriety took a heavy toll on the spikey red-haired visionary. The exhaustion caused by a gruelling and underpaid tour schedule, exacerbated by the ‘rock-n-roll lifestyle’, caused the singer to spiral into a fragile psychological state. In 1973, Bowie publicly ended his entanglement with Ziggy, bidding a final farewell to the character in front of 5000 fans at London’s Hammersmith Odeon. This moment was famously captured by director DA Pennebaker in the exhilarating concert film Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars 1979.

‘The Man Who Fell to Earth’ 1976

Following the turbulent Ziggy Stardust era, Bowie took a break from the British concert scene and moved to the United States in 1974. Ziggy’s overwhelming dominance had left Bowie in a state of crisis; what followed was a not-so-golden period for the musician, depicted with searing realism in director Alan Yentob’s fly-on-the-wall (or as Bowie describes it, ‘fly-in-the-milk’) documentary, Cracked Actor 1975. Struggling to find his new identity, Bowie decided to move back into acting. Fatigued from years of touring, Bowie’s thin frame, pale complexion and permanently dilated left eye gave him an otherworldly appearance, making him perfect for Nicholas Roeg’s 1976 film The Man Who Fell to Earth (illustrated), considered then (and now) to be one of Bowie’s finest on-screen roles. With critics praising his alien characterisation, Bowie went on to land subsequent ‘otherworldly’ roles, including a rapidly ageing vampire in Tony Scott’s 1983 film The Hunger (illustrated); as the enigmatic Phillip Jeffries in David Lynch’s Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me 1992; and as Jareth, the Goblin King, in Jim Henson’s Labyrinth 1986 (illustrated).

‘The Hunger’ 1983

Despite this pattern of casting, Bowie’s acting dexterity extended far beyond the realms of scary monsters and super creeps. After a period of recovery and self-reflection in the late 1970s, Bowie moved back to the world of theatre, taking on leading roles in touring productions such as Jack Hofsiss’s The Elephant Man 1980. After a successful stint on Broadway, Bowie then tried his hand at Brechtian theatre, appearing in the television adaptation of Baal 1982, directed by Alan Clarke. Over the coming years, he gradually returned to the big screen, working with notable directors such as Nagisa Ōshima in the 1983 wartime drama Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence (illustrated), Julien Temple in Absolute Beginners 1986 (illustrated), and Martin Scorsese in The Last Temptation of Christ 1988. In each of these films, Bowie drew on his own life experiences to develop stirring, deeply personal performances.

‘Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence’ 1983

Colourful, considered and character-driven, the films included in ‘The Cracked Actor: Bowie on Screen’ chart the changes in David Bowie’s acting style. From early on-stage musical performances to unforgettable on-screen roles, this program offers a rare opportunity to see an eclectic suite of films featuring the pop-culture icon, which will appeal to aficionados and ‘absolute beginners’ alike. ‘Bowie on Screen’ includes the following films screening Wednesdays and Saturdays:

The Image 1969 / Dir: Michael Armstrong
The Cracked Actor 1975 / Dir: Alan Yentob
The Man Who Fell to Earth 1976 / Dir: Nicolas Roeg
Just a Gigolo 1978 / Dir: David Hemmings
Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars 1979 / Dir: DA Pennebaker
Christiane F. 1981 / Dir: Uli Edel
Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence 1983 / Dir: Nagisa Ōshima
The Hunger 1983 / Dir: Tony Scott
Absolute Beginners 1986 / Dir: Julien Temple
Labyrinth 1986 / Dir: Jim Henson
The Last Temptation of Christ 1988 / Dir: Martin Scorsese
The Linguini Incident 1991 / Dir: Richard Shepard
Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me 1992 / Dir: David Lynch
Basquiat 1996 / Dir: Julian Schnabel
The Prestige 2006 / Dir: Christopher Nolan

Victoria Wareham is Assistant Curator, Australian Cinémathèque, QAGOMA
‘The Cracked Actor: Bowie on Screen’ / Australian Cinémathèque, GOMA / 17 August – 5 October 2024

The Australian Cinémathèque
The Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art (QAGOMA) is the only Australian art gallery with purpose-built facilities dedicated to film and the moving image. The Australian Cinémathèque at GOMA provides an ongoing program of film and video that you’re unlikely to see elsewhere, offering a rich and diverse experience of the moving image, showcasing the work of influential filmmakers and international cinema, rare 35mm prints, recent restorations and silent films with live musical accompaniment by local musicians or on the Gallery’s Wurlitzer organ originally installed in Brisbane’s Regent Theatre in November 1929.

Featured image: Production still from The Man Who Fell to Earth 1976