Anarchy in Gotham ... Ledger and Rotten dressed to kill. Photograph: Reuters (Joker)/Getty Images (Rotten)
Heath Ledger's manic portrayal of the Joker in the new Batman flick The Dark Knight is, apparently, based on Johnny Rotten. Director Chris Nolan said of the Kate Bush-loving ex- Sex Pistol: "We very much took the view, in looking at the character of the Joker, that what's strong about him is this idea of anarchy".
Anarchy? Nolan's clearly seen Rotten's recent 4-letter tirade at the launch of Guitar Hero 3. So which other rockstars have been the inspiration for fictional film characters?
The most famous of which is perhaps Frank Sinatra who provided the inspiration for Johnny Fontane in The Godfather. Sinatra found his own real life godfather in the shape of New Jersey gangster Willie Moretti, who used his considerable muscle to get the fledgling crooner gigs at top notch casinos (effectively kick starting his career). Later on, to get Sinatra out of a dodgy contract with band leader Tommy Dorsey (who was getting a third of Sinatra's earnings - Dorsey's agent was getting another 10 percent) he paid the bandleader an unexpected visit where he allegedly jammed the barrel of a gun into his mouth to release Sinatra from the contract. It worked. However, throughout his life Sinatra denied any mob associations.
As for the infamous horse head scene scene which many took as a thinly veiled reference to Sinatra attempting to get a part in From Here To Eternity - that's got to be fiction, right?
Elsewhere, Mick Jagger's reclusive rock star Turner in the 1970 film Performance was based on Brian Jones. In an interview he said: "The idea was, I suppose, that people would take Turner as me. You want an audience to accept that, otherwise you've failed as an actor. It didn't really strike me as me. I modelled the character on people I knew, like Brian Jones, who'd very recently been around and who'd really gone off the deep end."
Perhaps less well known is that Frances McDorman's bohemian, chain-smoking character Jane in Laurel Canyon is allegedly based on Joni Mitchell. The director Lisa Cholodenko said: "I'm going to steal a few things I know about Joni Mitchell and put them in this character."
Which other musicians do you think have made, or would make, great movie characters?
