Acting up ... perhaps Mariah should just stick to the day job? Photograph: Chad Rachman/AP
Whatever you think of Mariah Carey's vocal and other talents, no one could deny that her rather pleasantly-titled album, The Emancipation of Mimi (from the whining of Rodolfo, one assumes), has been something of a success as an exercise in the comeback. With record sales from the first week onwards, eight Grammy nominations thrown in for good measure, the mistress of soft-focus, pleasantly plump R&B is assuredly back in the hot seat.
So what on earth was she thinking (or whichever part of her enormous entourage she pays to perform that function) when she agreed to star in another film? Her last appearance on the big scream was an unmitigated commercial and artistic disaster, and her day job seemed for a long time to be one of its major casualties. You would have thought, fingers burned, and all that.
But no. And if her own rather sorry example was insufficient, there are plenty of others in the book. From Madonna, the almost mythical quality of whose stagecraft seems to turn to dust whenever she tries to act (with the result that even her loving husband apparently refuses to indulge her screen fantasies), to 50 Cent, the passage from stage to screen seems to be all cost and no gain.
Typically one would put this trend down to plain lack of talent. And with the amount of luck it requires even for very talented actors to get a break in the business, one isn't inclined to look on the matter too graciously when the already famous waltz unhindered into the frame. Other days, though, one might seek the reason why. After all, part and parcel of being a singer, no less than an actor, these days is simply looking the business on screen, loving the camera and all that malarkey.
The Guardian's columnist John Patterson, who wrote about this issue while reeling from exposure to Carey's first film - Glitter - put the phenomenon down to the size of the various singers' egos. After all, he pointed out, the screen conversion seemed to work perfectly well with less ridiculously over-celebrated musicians such as LL Cool J, and, more recently, Ludacris, whose performance in Crash was a highlight of an already highly-lit film. But I'm not so sure. For a start, if you're looking for egos inflated from over-adulation, Hollywood's no bad place to begin.
To my mind, the issue is more basic. Watching actors act requires a psychological operation in which the mind is required to distinguish between the actor's own persona and the character represented. (It's interesting to note in passing that both these terms, used to refer to that which is held to be most "individual" and "unique" about us, actually denote quite the opposite: the "persona" was the mask worn by actors in Athenian theatre, and "character" refers originally to printing type - so there.) Even with actors who are famous, and with whom consequently one is always aware of their identity, the mind can still perform this operation because one of the things their persona includes is that they're an actor. With famous singers, however, it's different: one looks at them - and for the rest we use our ears - and precisely because they draw our attention in this singular fashion, we fail to suspend our disbelief when called upon to do so.
So perhaps this is the main reason why famous non-actors always appear so wooden when they attempt to act, and it really isn't their fault at all. Well maybe it is in Mariah's case, but I suppose we'll just have to wait and see about that.
