The presence of a musician in a film is generally cause for concern. Think Mick Jagger in Freejack, Mariah Carey in Glitter, Madonna in… anything.

But musicians on the screen aren’t always terrible, as David Bowie proved. Unlike others, he knew he wasn’t an outstanding musician and actor. He was well aware that he was being given a role because he was David Bowie and maybe it was because of this self-awareness he actually tried a little more than other pop stars. He could have phoned it in, but he didn’t.

He did things like this...

1. The Man Who Fell To Earth – 1976

Just in case Bowie didn’t seem alien enough to audiences in 1976, his film debut was the story of an extraterrestrial, on Earth in order to make the money he needs to build a machine to transport water back to his home planet and gets hooked on sex, drink and daytime TV. If this was Bowie’s only foray into cinema, his film career could be deemed a curio, but thankfully, he continued.

2. Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence – 1983

A Christmas film set in a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp during the Second World War. Ho ho ho.
While incarcerated, Bowie’s POW Major Jack ‘Strafers’ Celliers, embarks on a homoerotic relationship with the camp’s commandant.
Director Nagisa Oshima got a fantastically unsettling yet captivating performance from Bowie.

3. Labyrinth – 1986

Easily his most famous role, Labyrinth was a big part for many who were youngsters during the 1980s and continues to enchant new viewers today, helped in no small part by his menacing portrayal of Jareth The Goblin King.
He also turns into an owl. The film is helped by virtue of being a musical for which Bowie produced the soundtrack. Barely a week goes by where my wife doesn’t start singing one of the songs from the soundtrack.

4. The Last Temptation of Christ – 1988

Martin Scorsese initially wanted Sting to play Pontius Pilate in this Biblical epic, but it was Bowie who ultimately got the role when the project got off the ground.
His time on screen is brief, but it serves to highlight his natural charisma. Even with a horrible haircut and an even more horrible brown robe, Bowie is magnetic and his naturalistic delivery in delivering Jesus his sentence makes his short scene all the more engaging.

5. The Prestige – 2006

Apart from a voice cameo in SpongeBob SquarePants, this was last film appearance, but it was a damn fine one. From out of nowhere, he appears as Nikola Tesla in this Christopher Nolan story about the obsessive rivalry between two illusionists. Bowie enters as Tesla from behind a giant wall of electricity; a neat analogy for his effect on the film. His role is brief, but jolts the film back into life.

Among all the tributes to Bowie, this one stuck out to me. Guardians of the Galaxy director James Gunn has said he was trying to get the musician to do a cameo in Guardians Volume 2

The Bowie song Moonage Daydream appears in the first film, but for part two, he was looking to go a step further. He said: "Just a very short while ago Kevin Feige and I were talking about a cameo role in Guardians Vol. 2 and he brought up Bowie’s name. I told him nothing in the world would make me happier, but I heard from common friends he wasn’t doing well. We heard back that he was okay and it could potentially happen. Who knows what that was about?

"Bowie was an idol of mine, huge and omnipresent. Few artists in any field have had as an indelible impression upon me as he has. To my mind, Ziggy Stardust is perhaps the greatest rock and roll album of all time.

"We featured Moonage Daydream in Guardians, but I always thought the album’s character was felt far beyond that, in the aesthetics, in the integral and seemingly-natural linking in popular culture of 70s rock and space opera. I’ve been trying to work another song from Ziggy into the sequel, which would make Bowie the only artist to have a song on both Vol. 1 and Vol. 2. I thought this was fair and appropriate. Although I cut the scene it was used in from the script, we have the rights. Who knows. Maybe I can figure a way out."

I hope he does.

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Mike Shaw writes in the KM Group's What's On every week.