The Baftas 2026. Stormzy, a singer \u2014 as in a singing man from the singing world, is announcing plans for an acting career. Presenter Alan Cumming reacts immediately. \u201cStay in your lane, Stormzy! How\u2019d you like it if I headlined Glastonbury?\u201d<\/p>\n
The problem, be in no doubt, is not singers taking acting jobs, it\u2019s the other way around. \u201cActors,\u201d to paraphrase Stuart Lee, \u201ccoming over \u2018ere, with their masterful breathing techniques, and their advanced diaphragm control and their long hours of vocal study with top coaches!\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
My fears reached melting point as Jessie Buckley won Best Actress for her role in Hamnet. \u201cOh Christ,\u201d I yelled at nobody, \u201cjust don\u2019t let her sing! Isn\u2019t it enough that Cillian Murphy is on the last Frank and Walters album without Buckley being able to sing the birds out of the trees!\u201d Actors and singers, not a fair fight.<\/p>\n
My real gripe is how bloody easy they make it look. This singing lark is supposed to be hard. You work at it for years to \u201cfind your voice\u201d. The word \u201ctortured\u201d gets bandied about a lot, although it\u2019s never clear who exactly is being tortured. You\u2019re not supposed to master it during your coffee break at RADA. Lads, please, show some respect.<\/p>\n
They are not the first. Bradley Cooper trained for months to sing his own vocals alongside Lady Gaga in A Star is Born. That must have taken some nerve. Gaga is platinum standard, a Messi of the staves. To sit beside her and say: \u201cI\u2019ll take this.\u201d Holy Moly.<\/p>\n
Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone both learned to sing for La La Land. Gosling even learned to play piano. Tom Hiddleston performed his own vocal in the Hank Williams biopic I Saw the Light. Jennifer Laurence\u2019s performance of The Hanging Tree from Hunger Games even charted.<\/p>\n
Some others, had they not acted, would probably have thrived in music. Meryl Streep is classically trained as an opera singer \u2014 hence her own vocals in Mamma Mia. Anne Hathaway is a classically trained soprano and performed as a teen at Carnegie Hall.<\/p>\n
She is known, pay attention singers, for rigorous vocal preparation that borders on the obsessive. To prepare for Les Mis\u00e9rables,Hathaway worked with vocal coach Joan Lader to enable her to maintain perfect pitch while crying in the key scenes. She sang every note live on set. Naturally, she won an Oscar.<\/p>\n
But it\u2019s the ones who casually maintain a stellar singing career in tandem with the acting that get to me the most. Zoey Deschanel, brilliant actress and one half of the superb indie duo She and Him; Scarlet Johansson, two albums and counting; Jared Leto, frontman in 30 Seconds to Mars.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
The \u201cissue\u201d is that actors work harder on their voices than most singers do. They are trained in its use and control from day one. \u201cSingers\u201d tend to treat it as some kind of mystical gift. They are born with it. They believe it responds well to abuse. They certainly don\u2019t need to warm it up!<\/p>\n
If this acting turns sour for young Buckley, we singers are in deep trouble. The soundtrack album for Wild Rose (2018) was superb. Her take on songs from John Prine, Emmylou Harris and Primal Scream would give veteran performers pause for thought. Her performance of Glasgow (No Place Like Home) was an absolute showstopper.<\/p>\n
The album with Suede\u2019s Bernard Butler was better still. For All the Days that Tear the Heart (2022) was shortlisted for the Mercury Prize. It was rightly described as \u201cmesmerising\u201d. It did not have the feel of a side project, by any stretch. A follow up, if the acting ever allows, cannot come quickly enough.<\/p>\n
Mind you, next up in this \u201cactor turned singer\u201d routine is one Paul Mescal. This year, he will step into the role of playing Paul McCartney in The Beatles films. I can offer some singing fraternity advice here: Paul\u2019s songs are notoriously hard. He has the voice of an angel and the range on an intercontinental missile. Is it too late to play John?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Baftas 2026. Stormzy, a singer \u2014 as in a singing man from the singing world, is announcing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":318224,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[93,61,60,6405],"class_list":["post-318223","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-music-movies-reviews-munster"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/318223","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=318223"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/318223\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/318224"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=318223"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=318223"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=318223"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}