The only movie role David Bowie regretted turning down: “I don’t have to kick myself too hard”
Musicians dabbling in acting has become an accepted part of the industry, and because he was one of the biggest stars in the music world who’d proven himself to be a hugely talented actor, David Bowie regularly found himself fielding offers for feature film productions.
Clearly, he wasn’t averse to the idea, considering he appeared in dozens of movies throughout his career, but he remained selective over which parts he wanted to play. If the script wasn’t strong enough or the character wasn’t juicy enough, then he wasn’t interested, and he never came to regret those decisions.
Most famously, Bowie was officially announced as the villainous Max Zorin in James Bond sequel A View to a Kill when the 14th canonical instalment in the long-running espionage franchise was unveiled to the world, only for the ‘Thin White Duke’ to back out of the project and ultimately fire a shot at 007 by denouncing the “terrible script,” which meant he couldn’t justify “spending so long on something that bad.”
He also rejected Christopher Nolan’s initial overtures when the filmmaker sought to gauge his enthusiasm for playing Nikola Tesla in The Prestige, but the director’s persistence ultimately paid off, making Bowie the one and only actor Nolan had returned to after being turned down, such was his determination to get him in the ensemble.
For the most part, Bowie had no issues knocking back onscreen gigs, and the one time he did look back with a tinge of regret, it didn’t even come back to haunt him. “I have, on the whole, avoided Hollywood like the plague,” he admitted to Film Threat before revealing the solitary picture that he wished he could have starred in.
“The only Hollywood movie I regret having passed on was a piece that Ridley Scott very much wanted me to do,” he said. “He even determined that if I didn’t do it, he wouldn’t make it. Unfortunately, I was touring at that time, so it became an impossibility. He never did make it, so at least I know that I didn’t have to kick myself too hard.”
Scott proved to be a man of his word, refusing to make the movie he’d envisioned with Bowie in the lead because Bowie was unable to commit. It must have been a decent role, considering it’s the only one he regrets saying no to, although part of it may have been down to his personal connection to the directorial siblings.
Bowie famously starred in Tony Scott’s feature-length debut The Hunger in 1983, and he was already familiar with Ridley by that point, having appeared in one of the filmmaker’s thousands of adverts, this one for ice lollies of all things. Furthering the ties between them, Denis Villeneuve admitted that Bowie was his first choice to play Niander Wallace in Blade Runner 2049, but following his passing, the auteur was forced into the significant downgrade of hiring Jared Leto instead.
