Aaron's Top Ten Musicians Who Became Actors

I left out Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley and Bing Crosby, but I wanted to state, for the record, that they didn't slip my mind.  I just wanted to highlight some of the less obvious choices.

10.  Meat Loaf - I never saw Black Dog, where he plays a trucker opposite Patrick Swayze, but I bet it's what us Midwesterners call a "hoot."

9.  Dwight Yoakam - Played a good drunk in fellow musician-turned-actor Billy Bob Thornton's Sling Blade, and made one hell of a creepy villain in Panic Room.

8.  Hoyt Axton - Lovable, affectionate country singer-turned-actor played the father in Gremlins and a sheriff in the well-cast, unfunny, but somehow memorable Disorganized Crime.

7.  Ice Cube/Ice T - The T's.  You want a bad-ass, don't cast Vin Diesel, don't cast The Rock, just call one of these guys.  I once pulled up next to Ice-T while stuck in traffic.  He was driving a red Mustang convertible, and he had four women in the car with him.  Pimp!

6.  Mos Def - I loved him in Be Kind Rewind.  He's a little less rough around the edges than most hip-hop singers-turned-actors, and he doesn't take himself so seriously.  He's worth at least two or three dollars more than 50 Cent.

5.  Cher - I can't stand her, really, but I have to admit she's good.  She somehow made me sympathetic to a coked-out, obnoxious party animal in Mask, and I don't know quite how.

4.  Kris Kristofferson - He's got that creepy, scrunched up face and those twinkling blue eyes, and they made for a great villainous turn in Lone Star.  And he played Rubber Duck in one of my favorite films as a child, the trucker drama Convoy.

3.  Michael Des Barres - Who can forget him as Murdoc in MacGyver.  He was the unkillable bad-ass when I was a kid.  Forget Jason Vorhees, forget Freddy Kruger, Murdoc was the closet monster.

2.  David Bowie - I didn't even know it was him in The Prestige until afterwards.  The dude is creepy.  It's something about having two different colored eyes.  And who can forget that leotard he was wearing in Labyrinth?  We all know what David Bowie's packing in his lunch box.

1.  Marky Mark - Take that, Nilay!  This is not stunt positioning.  I actually think he's made the best of his transition from singing.  Over L L Cool J or Tone Loc or Donnie Wahlberg, or even The Fat Boys, I'd pick Marky Mark, hands down.