Rock legend David Bowie dies, aged 69

Rock legend David Bowie dies, aged 69



Just days after the surprise release of a new album, Blackstar, rock legend - and occasional movie actor - David Bowie has died. He was 69, and was revealed to have been suffering from cancer for some time.

Born David Robert Jones in 1947 in London, and, inspired by American rock'n'roll records, he was playing in skiffle bands by the age of 11. He studied, art, music and design at Bromley Technical High School, where he added a love of jazz to his proclivity for rock. He was also handy with his fists: his famous, differently-coloured eyes were the result of a fight.

He released his scattershot, self-titled debut album in 1969, but hit big with its follow-up in 1972. Also originally self-titled, it was re-named to Space Oddity after its most iconic track. The likes of The Man Who Sold The World (1970), The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars (1972), Aladdin Sane (1973), Young Americans (1975), Station To Station (1976) and Low (1977) followed, each consolodating his unique talent, and each intoducing a new persona for the musician.

Bowie began transposing that chameleonic element of his performances into film in 1976, taking the title role in Nicolas Roeg's The Man Who Fell To Earth as the stranded Martian Thomas Jerome Newton. Subsequent roles were sporadic, and juggled lighter and more serious work. He narrated The Snowman in 1982 and gooned around with Monty Python alumni in 1983's Yellowbeard. But he also starred in the hard-hitting Japanese POW drama Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence (also 1983) alongside Tom Conti, Ryuichi Sakamoto and Takeshi Kitano; as a crumbling vampire with Catherine Deneuve and Susan Sarandon in Tony Scott's The Hunger (1983 again); and as Pontius Pilate in Martin Scorsese's The Last Temptation Of Christ (1988). He also undertook 157 shows as The Elephant Man on Broadway in the early '80s, drawing acclaim for a performance that was purely physical and didn't involve any make-up.



He turned down the (eventual) Christopher Walken role in 1985's Bond film A View To A Kill, but in 1986 he made an indelible impression on a new generation as the tight-trousered Goblin King of Jim Henson's Labyrinth, and showed up in Julien Temple's Absolute Beginners as Vendice Partners. A few years later he played the raving Phillip Jeffries in David Lynch's Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me (1992); briefly appeared as Andy Warhol in Julien Schnabel's Basquiat (1996); and in 2001, played himself, judging the walk-off in Zoolander. His final major screen role (not counting cameos), once again essaying an air of slightly alien mystery, was as electric futurist Nikola Tesla in Christopher Nolan's 2006 The Prestige, with Christian Bale and Hugh Jackman.

His legacy as a musician is unquestionable, but that filmography, while a secondary consideration, is undeniably strong too.