This past week two very serious actors released music that none of us were expecting. Homeland’s Damian Lewis and MobLand’s Tom Hardy both released some not-awful music but still left us wondering, “Did we really need it though?”
We exist in a time when the likes of Troye Sivan, Cynthia Erivo, Donald Glover (Childish Gambino), Johnny Flynn, Jessie Buckley, Idris Elba, Zooey Deschanel (She & Him) and Lee Ji-Un (IU) can slip seamlessly between music and acting projects.
But, there still exist actorly types who we least expect to be harbouring musical ambitions.
In the twenty-first century we have witnessed some unlikely transformations of box office drawcards swapping scripts for mics and embarking on recording careers, most famously Jeff Goldblum, Kevin Bacon, Russell Crowe, and Keanu Reeves.
But they aren’t the only ones with shadow music careers. Here’s 15 more for you to track down plus a bonus TV show cast that’s just busting with wannabe pop stars.
Scarlett Johansson
CV: Under The Skin, Jurassic World Rebirth, multiple Avengers films.
Accolades: BAFTA, Tony and Cesar awards plus two Oscar nominations.
Johansson makes serious and seriously good music. Her first album Anywhere I Lay My Head was all Tom Waits covers with fittingly gritty production and mournful vocals. Musical guests included David Bowie and Nick Zinner (Yeah Yeah Yeahs).
It was followed up by Break Up, a more melodic indie collab with Pete Yorn. Could she get any cooler? Yep, she once joined The Jesus & Mary Chain on stage to provide backing vocals on Just Like Honey (the song was used in her breakout film Lost In Translation).
Hugh Laurie
CV: Various Black Adder series, House, Veep, Stuart Little.
Accolades: Three Golden Globes, multiple Emmy nominations, an OBE, and a CBE.
From sketch comedy to US network hospital drama, British actor Hugh Laurie can seemingly do it all. So why not branch out into… jazz and blues. Yep, Laurie released two albums in the ‘00s – Let Them Talk and Didn’t It Rain.
Both charted in Australia and were top three in the UK. Austrian fans cheered Let Them Talk to number one. And Laurie doesn’t just sing he plays piano, guitar, drums, harmonica, and saxophone.
Notable collabs include Tom Jones, Meat Loaf and a TV ‘supergroup’ that included Lost’s Greg Grunberg. He also rowed for Cambridge.
Toni Collette
CV: Muriel’s Wedding, The Sixth Sense, Knives Out, The Staircase.
Accolades: Has won six AACTA awards across three decades. Won an Emmy and was nominated for an Oscar.
Somehow somewhere between award-magnet projects Little Miss Sunshine (2006) and United States Of Tara (2009-2011), Collette found time to record the Beautiful Awkward Pictures album and put together a band, Toni Collette & The Finish.
While it disappeared never to be spoken of again (the title track is noted as peaking at #99 in Australia), her touring band (they played a handful of gigs in 2007) was an impressive line-up that included Glenn Richards (Augie March), Davey Lane (You Am I) and Amanda Brown (The Go-Betweens). Twentieth anniversary reunion next year?
Jacob Anderson
CV: Game Of Thrones, Doctor Who, Interview With The Vampire/The Vampire Lestat.
Accolades: Nominated four times for a Screen Actors Guild award. Won a MOBO and a Pride award.
Grey Worm is Raleigh Ritchie? Yep. At the same time Anderson was breaking out for his role in Game Of Thrones, a certain Raleigh Ritchie was blowing up with his soulful take on electronica R&B.
Turns out they were the same person all along – what a twist.
His last album Dead Ends And Diversions dropped in 2024 in the midst of his latest attention-grabbing role as Louis de Pointe du Lac in the TV adaptation of Anne Rice’s The Vampire Chronicles series (Brad Pitt played the role in the OG film). Both projects have garnered rave reviews.
Juliette Lewis
CV: Natural Born Killers, Yellowjackets, Over Your Dead Body.
Accolades: A cluster of Oscar, Emmy and Golden Globe nominations plus a number of acting accolades from various US critics associations.
About two decades into her acting career, Lewis was suddenly fronting the garage rockin’ Juliette & The Licks. They found a big fan in Dave Grohl, which scored them Foo Fighters support slots and Grohl drummed on the band’s recordings.
Licks’ shows were explosive, Lewis seemingly channeling every scary character she’d ever played on screen. Letting the band go, she recorded a solo album in 2009 (produced by Omar Rodriguez-Lopez).
Her last solo release (2017’s Future Deep) featured players from Cage The Elephant, The Offspring, and Florence & The Machine.
Matt Berry
CV: The IT Crowd, The Mighty Boosh, Toast Of London, the TV version of What We Do In The Shadows.
Accolades: Won a BAFTA for his acting and was also nominated for his writing. He was Emmy nominated in 2024.
UK comic actor Matt Berry not only has the most in-demand speaking voice but has been quietly releasing music since 1995. Now signed to the prestigious Acid Jazz label, last year saw him release his 11th solo studio album Heard Noises.
This year he released Everything’s Peachy as Matt Berry Trio. He also once composed a rock opera (AD/BC) that starred Richard Ayoade and hit streaming gold when one of his tracks (Take My Hand) was used in Netflix true crimer American Murder: Gabby Petito.
Goldie Hawn
CV: Shampoo, Death Becomes Her, The First Wives Club, Snatched.
Accolades: An Oscar and a Golden Globe for Cactus Flower and two Emmy nominations.
Like Collette, US comedy-acting superstar Goldie Hawn was ‘one and done’ when she released her Goldie album in 1972.
It may not have had as much impact as her movie career but it lives on as a sweet collection of bluegrass and folk takes on the songs of Dolly Parton, Donovan Leitch, Bob Dylan, and Joni Mitchell.
Parton and her musical partner Porter Wagoner even helped out on Hawn’s cover of My Blue Tears. The album has been remastered and reissued in recent years.
John Cho
CV: The Harold & Kumar films, three Star Trek films, FlashForward.
Accolades: Searching landed him a Best Actor gong at the American Film Awards.
Not only is John Cho front person for LA rockers Viva La Union but one of their songs was featured in Harold & Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay in 2008.
If you search deep enough you can find a self-titled album from 2009 streaming on Spotify. Those monthly listener numbers could do with a boost.
Photos of Cho back in the studio recording vocals were posted on social media in 2024. So, a new album soon?
Keiynan Lonsdale
CV: The Flash, Love Simon, Swift Street and Run.
Accolades: An MTV award for Best Kiss and guest judge duties on three different iterations of Drag Race.
Not long after making an impression in ABC kids’ TV show Dance Academy (2012-2013), Lonsdale was VJing for MTV Australia. As his star rose in Hollywood so did his interest in music.
Now he’s a fully fledged pop star since his featured vocal on Kasbo’s Lay It On Me clocked up 28 million streams on Spotify.
The RELOADED version of his The Heart Defence mix tape became available in July.
Mae Martin
CV: Feel Good, Taskmaster, SAP, Wayward.
Accolades: Won a Canadian Screen Award and landed a Netflix stand-up special.
Not satisfied with smashing stand-up, being one of the greatest Taskmaster participants ever and creating a hit Netflix series (Feel Good), Martin released their first album in 2025.
Dishing up an emo-pop sound, Martin’s Good Dream from the I’m A TV album has attracted over 700,000 listens so far on Spotify.
Was the Canadian comedian perhaps inspired by their Wayward co-star Toni Collette?
Ryan Gosling
CV: The Notebook, Drive, La La Land, Barbie, Project Hail Mary.
Accolades: A Golden Globe win plus one Emmy and three Oscar nominations.
It’s not surprising that an actor who got his start alongside Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake in the ‘90s reboot of The Mickey Mouse Club got into music. The surprise was the type of music he landed on. Gothic folk.
Signed to -ANTI, the Hollywood icon’s Dead Man’s Bones released a self-titled album in 2009. A second album was talked about but is yet to surface.
If you watched Netflix horror The Boroughs earlier this year you would have heard the band’s Lose Your Soul.
Zoe Kravitz
CV: X-Men:First Class, Mad Max: Fury Road, Big Little Lies, The Batman.
Accolades: Won a critics society award for directing Blink Twice and landed a coveted guest spot in The Studio.
Following in her actor mother Lisa Bonet’s footsteps, Kravitz made her onscreen debut in 2007 (No Reservations) but quickly followed in her musician father Lenny Kravitz’s footsteps, forming her first band in 2009 (Elevator Fight).
Music took a backseat as she concentrated on film and TV work until she started her LOLAWOLF duo in 2013. Two albums later and Kravitz has opened for Miley Cyrus in Australia and played Lollapalooza.
Jada Pinkett Smith
CV: Set It Off, three Matrix films, multiple Madagascar projects, Red Table Talk.
Accolades: Daytime Emmy winner, an MTV Trailblazer award and a Tony nomination.
Just as no one expected Ryan Gosling to dabble in goth folk, even less movie-goers expected Pinkett Smith to form a nu metal group with one of Fishbone.
Wicked Wisdom not only toured with Sevendust and Britney Spears (!) but they also appeared at Ozzfest 2005 (Sharon Osbourne was a fan).
Calling it a day after two albums there was a brief reboot as Wicked Evolution in 2012 and an even briefer, one-off reunion (that included Willow Smith) in 2021.
Clare Bowen
CV: Home & Away, Nashville, Hungry Ghosts.
Accolades: Hungry Ghosts was honoured with an Equity Award in the Outstanding Performance By An Ensemble category.
After a few years of acting gigs in Australia, Bowen was cast as a country singer in the US hit series Nashville. Her character’s songs featured on over 20 albums showcasing the Nashville cast.
Bowen naturally channelled this success into a 2018 solo album before forming the duet Bowen*Young with her hubby, country music singer Brandon Robert Young. Sometimes you just can’t fight fate.
Sir Anthony Hopkins
CV: The Elephant Man, The Silence Of The Lambs and a number of Thor films.
Accolades: Knighted in 1993, has a star on the Hollywood Walk Of Fame plus a trunkful of Oscars, BAFTAs and Emmys.
There’s acting legends and there’s Sir Anthony Hopkins. With seven decades of acclaimed roles under his belt, an early sign of Hopkins musical inclinations was his 1986 flop single Distant Star.
Twenty years later and Hopkins was revealed as a serious composer of classical music. His work has since been performed by Andre Rieu and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra.
In August of this year Decca Classics released a new album (Life Is A Dream) of his compositions with one piece already racking up half a million streams.
The Stranger Things kids who aren't Djo
CV: The Stranger Things
Accolades: It’s one of the five most-watched shows of all-time on Netflix.
Why let Joe Keery (Steve Harrington in Stranger Things) have all the fun topping charts around the globe as Djo? Fellow Stranger Things cast members aren’t going to be left behind. Maya Hawke (Robin Buckley) is signed to Mom + Pop Records and dropped her fourth album Maitreya Corso in July.
Finn Wolfhard (Mike Wheeler) fronted a couple of bands before going solo, dropping his most recent album Fire From The Hip also in July. Not only has Charlie Heaton (Johnathan Byers) drummed in bands Comaneci and Half Loon but he is also name-checked in songs by Skinny Lister and Djo (who he has, unsurprisingly, collab’d with).
