Acting Music Leap No Hurdle For Springfield

Acting-music leap no hurdle for Springfield
By John Wenzel Denver Post Staff Writer

Rick Springfield has bounced from music to acting and back - and now does both.

We love our favorite songs like old friends. Those dulcet melodies, those head-banging riffs. That unforgettable voice. That unforgettable ... face?

Look around: TV, movies, Web shorts and iPod screens burst with musicians trying their hand at acting. There's Beyoncé in "Dreamgirls" and Justin Timberlake in "Shrek the Third." There's Queen Latifah in "Hairspray" and Ice-T on "Law and Order."

Of course, any pop-culture hound knows it's a short trip from musician to actor. Both professions require a knack for projection and connection with audiences - and a considerable love of the spotlight.

"It's all performance," said Rick Springfield, an '80s idol and TV regular who plays the Paramount Theatre tonight. "When I'm acting, I'm an actor, and when I'm playing music, I'm a musician. I've been doing it for so long that it's a very natural, comfortable switch."
Springfield, 58, got his start in the 1960s in Australian bands like Zoot, earning teen-idol status and eventually crossing over to the States. But his music career tanked in the early '70s, so he turned to acting.

"I started doing that in 1975 in lieu of a music career because I wasn't getting any record deals, although I was still writing songs," he said.

Springfield did guest spots in "The Incredible Hulk" and "The Rockford Files." He made a small appearance in "Battlestar Galactica" and had a reoccurring role on "The Young and The Restless." But it wasn't until he joined "General Hospital" in 1981 that his acting career helped revive his musical one.

That same year, Springfield's album "Working Class Dog" birthed the then-ubiquitous single "Jessie's Girl." The pop-culture synergy propelled him to stratospheric heights, eventually earning him a Grammy.

"It's a great way for musicians to cross over," said Matthew Donahue, a popular culture studies instructor at Bowling Green State University in Ohio. "It exposes them to folks who haven't heard their music."

Donahue cited Springfield's early '80s breakthrough as an example of success through media convergence. But Springfield is just one in a caravan of glittery-eyed singers leveraging celebrity through screen time.

Long before Frank Sinatra appeared in "The Manchurian Candidate" or Elvis Presley in "Blue Hawaii," musicians made short promotional films - grainy, off-the-cuff precursors to music videos.

"There are some amazing short films of Louis Armstrong and Bessie Smith from the late '20s where they're promoting their music in addition to bringing themselves into a different medium," Donahue said. "And of course you could go back to 'The Jazz Singer' (1927) as

Rick Springfield turned to acting to get him through a dull spot in his musical career - then his role on "General Hospital" brought the spotlight to his 1981 album, "Working Class Dog," and the hit "Jessie's Girl." (Getty Kevin Winter)the first talking picture."

A dramatic flair certainly helps. Close-up-ready musicians like Barbra Streisand used music as a path to stage and screen. Elvis Presley originally wanted to be an actor, and missed an opportunity to revive his career when manager Col. Tom Parker kept him from appearing in the 1976 movie "A Star is Born" - a role Streisand badly wanted him for.

When it happens the other way around, it's usually a grisly sight. Witness Keanu Reeves' "band" Dogstar, Jared Leto's unholy 30 Seconds to Mars, or any of the miscarriages of blues that Bruce Willis or Jim Belushi have perpetrated.

"Every actor I know would love to be a rock star, and every musician I know would love to try acting," Springfield said. "They're that close, and there's some part missing in each career."
Many musical artists turn to acting at the height of their success, forging a new career while keeping the old one hot. But when Springfield's music career hit another rough patch in the mid-to-late '80s, he returned to acting out of necessity.

He acted in Las Vegas spectaculars and in musicals. In 2005, he returned to "General Hospital," where he currently plays his signature character, Dr. Noah Drake. He even performed a song from his forthcoming album, "Who Killed Rock N Roll," on the show, an appropriate career move considering his musical revival of late.

"He's clearly an artist that reaches a generation of women, and when he came out in the '80s he was a borderline teen idol," Donahue said. "Doing 'General Hospital' early on, then coming back again is a no-brainer, win-win situation. It lets him reach a new public that's already a market for the myth of romantic love."

Springfield sees it more simply.

"At the bottom of it is a desire to be loved. Why else would you get up and prance around in front of people like that?"

This article originally appeared in the Denver Post Online and can be seen here.