In one trailer for the upcoming Bob Dylan biopic, “A Complete Unknown,” a fan pleads with the musician, played by Timothée Chalamet, saying that she can’t hear the music at his sold-out concert.
Chalamet, his eyes hidden behind Dylan’s trademark Ray Ban sunglasses, his hair a frizzy mop, responds: “I’ll sing louder.”
Biopics have often relied on creative license to portray a star, but Chalamet’s words are not just blowin’ in the wind. The songs in “Unknown,” directed by James Mangold, have resonated through generations, and Chalamet’s voice was so impressive that his live vocals — sung while performing in character — were kept for the final cut.
That is not the industry standard. Some films use an original artist’s track while an actor lip-syncs. When actors in biopics do sing, it is common for them to record the vocals in a studio and then overdub them onscreen. Singing live on camera can leave a performance falling flat, especially if the actor is not a trained vocalist.
But when done well, live vocals can add a touch of realism.
“The idea was to get a little bit different sound in each different venue by using practical microphones from the period,” Tod Maitland, the sound mixer for “Unknown,” said in an interview with Variety this month. “That helped create a nice tapestry of sounds. But Timmy went 100 percent live. It was pretty amazing.”
It’s not Chalamet’s first time at the mic — he sang in the 2023 film “Wonka,” and attended LaGuardia High School, a performing arts school in New York City.
“A Complete Unknown” releases in theaters on Dec. 25, but if you don’t want to wait to hear Chalamet belt out “Like a Rolling Stone,” you can listen on Spotify.
Dylan’s lyrics, which reflected a vehement desire for societal change among younger Americans in the 1960s, were revolutionary. While it was unusual to use live vocals for “Unknown,” many past biopics have relied on an actor’s singing voice.
Here are a few examples of actors who hit their own high notes in biopics to capture an authentic appeal.
Diana Ross — “Lady Sings the Blues” (1972)
Rather than attempt a straight imitation of Billie Holiday’s unmistakable vocals, Diana Ross, already a successful singer, chose to interpret Holiday’s sonic thumbprint in the biopic “Lady Sings the Blues.”
“Her singing of the more than a dozen songs once sung by Miss Holiday is a talented, very intelligent singer’s homage to a jazz style of a sophistication never since matched by anyone,” the critic Vincent Canby wrote in a 1972 New York Times review of the film.
The double-album soundtrack spent two weeks at No. 1, and Ross was nominated for an Oscar for Best Actress for her role.
“When it was time for me to do the film, I spent a lot of time in my research, trying to understand it, owning it,” Ross said in a short video, “Behind the Blues.” “But one of the things that I didn’t want to do is to try to copy Billie Holiday.”
In 2021, the actress Andra Day in her first major movie role brought Holiday to life again in “The United States vs. Billie Holiday.” The film depicted when the singer was targeted by the federal government in a racially-charged move to censor her.
Day, already an accomplished vocalist, sang several songs for the movie, including the protest song that drew the government’s ire, “Strange Fruit.” She was nominated for an Oscar for Best Actress for her performance, and the film won a Grammy for its soundtrack.
Sissy Spacek — “Coal Miner’s Daughter” (1980)
Sissy Spacek won an Oscar for Best Actress for her embodiment of Loretta Lynn, one of country music’s most recognizable voices and a symbol of rural resilience. “Coal Miner’s Daughter,” based on Lynn’s best-selling autobiography of the same name, detailed her humble beginnings and path to stardom.
Lynn’s unmistakable Kentucky drawl and vibrato were as much a part of her identity as the Appalachian upbringing she often sang of, and Spacek made them part of the role.
“First, I went to three or four of her live concerts,” Spacek said in an interview with The Times in 1980. “Then, when I was at my farm in Virginia, I got headphones and listened to tapes of her songs, a few at a time, and I would sing along with them, trying to sound just like Loretta.”
She also spent two months working with Lynn’s musicians in Nashville, during which the band offered tips on how to capture the country singer’s voice.
Spacek, who is from Texas, had a brief career as a folk-rock singer in New York before the movie, and she felt she couldn’t play the part unless she sang the songs herself. Most of the 12 songs she performed in the film were recorded live.
“I think the way we did it just adds another element of realism,” she told The Times. “When you make a little goof-up, which I did a couple of times, it only makes the film better.”
Val Kilmer — “The Doors” (1991)
Jim Morrison, the leather-pants-clad, whiskey-chugging frontman of The Doors, was a folk hero and a menace to tradition.
Big shoes (and tight pants) to fill. Val Kilmer dutifully performed as Morrison in the director Oliver Stone’s account of the singer’s tragic arc, from the sandy beaches of Venice, Calif., to his death in a Paris apartment at the age of 27.
Kilmer sang a cappella in several scenes, and his vocal renditions were integrated into Doors recordings, according to the critic Janet Maslin in her 1991 New York Times review of the film. According to Kilmer’s official Facebook page, he did all of his own singing.
“Getting into the music was a lot of fun,” he said on “Late Night with David Letterman” in 1992.
In Maslin’s review, she wrote, “Never losing sight of the singer’s magnetism, Mr. Kilmer captures all of Morrison’s reckless, insinuating appeal.”
Reese Witherspoon and Joaquin Phoenix — “Walk the Line” (2005)
Also directed by Mangold, “Walk the Line” impressed audiences with its authentic tale of music, addiction and rebellion.
Reese Witherspoon won an Oscar for Best Actress for her portrayal of June Carter Cash, the singer and wife of Johnny Cash, played by Joaquin Phoenix.
Witherspoon had never sung professionally, she said in a 2005 interview on “Late Night With Conan O’Brien,” and took six months of voice lessons before filming began.
“That was a long time to rehearse for a movie,” she said. “Usually we rehearse for a week, and I had to learn how to sing.”
Phoenix, who also sang for the role, took vocal lessons to get the singer’s deep, distinctive baritone. It was, Phoenix said on “Conan,” “The most humiliating process I’ve ever endured.”
“You do these exercises that’s all these vowels,” he said. “It’s so uncomfortable.”
In addition to Witherspoon’s Oscar, Phoenix was nominated for Best Actor, and the film was nominated for Best Sound Mixing. The film also received a Grammy for its soundtrack.
Mos Def, Beyoncé and Jeffrey Wright — “Cadillac Records” (2008)
Beginning in the 1940s, Chicago’s music scene exploded, shaping blues and rock music, with the likes of Muddy Waters, Chuck Berry and Etta James leaving their mark.
Their blues vocals shaped generations of musicians, so it was no small task to portray them in the film “Cadillac Records.”
But Mos Def as Berry, Jeffrey Wright as Waters and Beyoncé as James brought believable creativity, pride, sorrow and ambition to the roles — and to the voices.
Beyoncé recorded four songs for the film and the accompanying album. “She’s singing some of them in the movie, she’s singing a cappella in the movie,” Sofia Sondervan, one of the film’s producers, said in a behind-the-scenes interview. “No one could have done it like her.” Except James, of course.
The song “At Last,” performed by Beyoncé in the movie, won a Grammy for Best Traditional R&B Vocal Performance.
Austin Butler — “Elvis” (2022)
Austin Butler was so dedicated to his revival of Elvis Presley’s vocal cadence in “Elvis” that he had a hard time losing the distinctive drawl when the movie wrapped.
According to Baz Luhrmann, the film’s director, Butler sang for all of the film’s appearances of Presley as a young man.
“Even before his two years of vocal studies I feel that Austin is channeling the vocal qualities of Elvis,” Luhrmann wrote on Instagram in 2022.
The film was nominated for eight Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Actor and Best Sound.
To prepare for the part, Butler, a vocal chameleon in more recent roles like “Dune: Part Two,” took great pains to ensure that he reflected Presley’s most subtle inflections.
“I would take an interview or a speech that he had onstage where he is talking to the audience, and I would practice it as though I was trying to get it to be exact,” he said in a 2022 interview with Entertainment Weekly. “That way, I couldn’t hear a difference between my voice and his.”
The post Timothée Chalamet Joins a Rarified Club of Actors Singing in Musical Biopics appeared first on New York Times.
