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Stage Fright: Celebrating the worst performances by musicians in recent films

Countless lists are made every day of the best movie roles filled by musicians, and lord knows we could fill up several lists of our favorite performances (here’s a deep cut and a hot take: we actually loved Norah Jones in Wong Kar-Wai’s My Blueberry Nights). But very few talk about the worst performances made by musicians in modern film.

With Sir Paul McCartney making an appearance in this Friday’s Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales, we thought we’d gather up what we think are some pretty horrific film appearances made by famous musicians in the past 10 years or so.

From a dressed-down diva and an aged rock legend to “the king” and a CGI abomination, there’s proof that not everybody can make the transition to the silver screen.

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Justin Timberlake, Yogi Bear

This is one of the rare times when the actor’s really not that bad, but just happens to be in one of the worst movies of that particular year. Timberlake is doing a pretty accurate take on Boo Boo Bear all throughout this movie, and if Yogi Bear and company were ever to return to the small screen, he’d be high on our list for candidates for voiceover artists. But as it stands, he’s horrible because he’s having lines from this movie come out of his mouth. He’s given an awkward and stilted Dan Aykroyd performance to riff off of, and his character is made with some of the worst CGI that the modern era’s ever seen in a major studio production. This movie was an absolute garbage fire at the box office, and doesn’t have much of a legacy aside from giving us this wonderful poster. Actually, the whole damn movie is worth it for that poster alone.

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