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FROM WIKI:

Acting career

Bowie’s first major film role in The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976) earned acclaim. David’s character Thomas Jerome Newton is an alien from a planet that is dying from a lack of water. In Just a Gigolo (1979), an Anglo-German co-production directed by David Hemmings, Bowie played the lead role of a Prussian officer Paul von Pryzgodski returning from World War I who is discovered by a Baroness (Marlene Dietrich) and put into her Gigolo Stable.

In the eighties Bowie continued with film roles and also starred in the Broadway production of The Elephant Man (1980-1981). In 1982 he made a cameo appearance as himself in Christiane F., focusing on a young girl’s drug addiction. Bowie also starred in The Hunger (1983), a revisionist vampire movie with Catherine Deneuve and Susan Sarandon. In the film, Bowie and Deneuve are vampire lovers, with her having made him a vampire centuries ago. While she is truly ageless, he discovers to his horror that although immortal, he can still age and rapidly becomes a pathetic, monstrous husk as the film progresses. In Nagisa Oshima’s film Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence (1983), based on Laurens van der Post’s novel The Seed and the Sower, Bowie played Major Jack Celliers, a prisoner of war in a Japanese internment camp. Another famous musician, Ryuichi Sakamoto, played the camp commandant who begins to be undermined by Celliers’ bizarre behavior. Bowie had a cameo as The Shark in Yellowbeard, a 1983 pirate comedy made by some of the members of Monty Python, and a small part as Colin the hit man in the 1985 film Into the Night. During this time Bowie was also asked to play the villain Max Zorin in the James Bond film A View to a Kill (1985), but turned down the role, stating that “I didn’t want to spend five months watching my stunt double fall off mountains.”[41]

Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence impressed some critics but his next major film project, the rock musical Absolute Beginners (1986), was both a critical and box office disappointment. The same year he appeared in the Jim Henson cult classic, the dark fantasy Labyrinth (1986), playing Jareth, the king of the goblins. Jareth is a powerful, mysterious creature who has an antagonistic yet strangely flirtatious relationship with Sarah (Jennifer Connelly), the film’s teenage heroine. Appearing in heavy make-up and a mane-like wig, Bowie sings a variety of new songs specially composed for the film’s soundtrack. Bowie also played a sympathetic Pontius Pilate in Martin Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ (1988). He was briefly considered for the role of The Joker by Tim Burton and Sam Hamm for 1989’s Batman. Hamm recalls “David Bowie would be kind of neat because he’s very funny when he does sinister roles”. The role ended up going to Jack Nicholson.[42]

Bowie portrayed a disgruntled restaurant employee opposite Rosanna Arquette in The Linguini Incident (1991), and played mysterious FBI agent Phillip Jeffries in David Lynch’s Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (1992). He took the small but pivotal role of Andy Warhol in Basquiat artist/director Julian Schnabel’s 1996 biopic of the artist Jean-Michel Basquiat – Bowie had met Warhol and been a guest at The Factory, though their relationship was a cool one (Warhol did not appreciate Bowie’s 1971 composition, ‘Andy Warhol’, feeling that it was poking fun at him, though wrote about him in glowing terms in his diaries when they occasionally met in the 1980s). Before appearing in The Hunger, a TV horror serial based on the 1983 movie, Bowie was invited by drum and bass Godfather, Goldie to play the ageing gangster Bernie in Andrew Goth’s independent, ‘Brighton Rock’ inspired movie, ‘Everybody Loves Sunshine’ (later re-released as B.U.S.T.E.D) indicating that however some commentators may have felt about Bowie dipping into Jungle music on his album ‘Earthling’, one of the most influential figures involved in the form was interested in what Bowie had to do in the genre (also appearing on Goldie’s album, ‘Saturnz Return’ around the same time). He played the title role in Mr. Rice’s Secret (2000) in which he is the neighbour of a terminally ill twelve year old. Shortly after Mr Rice dies, the boy discovers that Mr. Rice has planned a special treasure hunt which will lead to an important secret.

In 2001, Bowie appeared as himself in the film Zoolander, volunteering himself to be a walkoff judge between Ben Stiller’s character Zoolander, and Owen Wilson’s character Hansel. The film, a comedy, pays homage to Bowie’s legacy as a fashion pioneer in allowing him this role. Bowie portrayed Nikola Tesla alongside Christian Bale and Hugh Jackman in The Prestige (2006), directed by Christopher Nolan. It follows the bitter competition between two magicians around the turn of the century. Bowie has voice-acted in the animated movie Arthur and the Minimoys (or Arthur and the Invisibles in the US); his role in the film is the villain, Maltazard. In a 2006 episode of Extras, appearing as himself, he (in the context of the show) improvised and sung a song mocking the main character, played by Ricky Gervais. He will lend his voice to a character in the upcoming SpongeBob SquarePants episode titled Atlantis SquarePants as “Royal Highness”.

Further information: David Bowie filmography