Bowie as actor

Today, Bowie lives in New York City with his second wife, the Somali-born model Iman, and their daughter, Alex.

In 2004, taking the market by surprise, "A Reality Tour" was the best selling tour of the year. However, it was cut short after Bowie suffered chest discomfort while performing on stage in the northwestern German town of Scheesel, on June 25. Originally thought to be a pinched nerve in his shoulder, and later diagnosed as an acutely blocked artery, an emergency angioplasty was performed at a hospital in the region. He was then released in early July and continues to spend time recovering. The tour was cancelled for the time being, with hopes that he would go back on tour by August.

Bowie's first film major role in The Man Who Fell To Earth earned acclaim, as did his performance on stage as The Elephant Man. He had appeared in 1969 in an avant garde film as a mime. Since then his acting career has been sporadic. Nagisa Oshima's film Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence, based loosely on Laurens van der Post's novel The Seed and the Sower, was released in 1983. Bowie played Jack Celliers, a prisoner of war in a Japanese internment camp; another famous musician, Ryuichi Sakamoto, played the camp commandant. Bowie has a small part as a hit-man in 1984 film Into the Night Bowie also played a sympathetic Pontius Pilate in Martin Scorsese's The Last Temptation of Christ.

Mr. Lawrence impressed some critics but his next project, the rock musical Absolute Beginners (1986), was both a critical and box office disappointment. The same year he appeared in the Jim Henson movie Labyrinth, playing Jareth, the king of the goblins.

Along with numerous appearances as himself, Bowie also appeared in The Hunger, a revisionist vampire movie with Catherine Deneuve and Susan Sarandon; Basquiat, a biopic of the artist in which Bowie played Andy Warhol to great acclaim; and as mysterious FBI agent Phillip Jeffries in Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me. He also made a cameo appearance as the judge of the walk-off in the 2001 movie Zoolander.

Bowie appears in the 2002 List of "100 Great Britons" (sponsored by the BBC and voted for by the public), alongside such other greats as David Beckham, Aleister Crowley, and Johnny Rotten

 

Discography

See David Bowie discography