Elton John

In Tommy (1975), Elton John appears as the Pinball Wizard in platform boots that make standing upright look like a performance in itself. Ken Russell has a use for his appetite for elaborate costume, and John has little need to pretend to be an ordinary person. That suits him. His screen appearances work best when a director recognises the entertainer already there and gives him something suitably excessive to do. Ask for natural dialogue and the limitations become harder to overlook.

The move from Tommy to later cameos offers little evidence of a pursuit of demanding character parts. In Spice World (1997), he appears briefly as himself; in The Road to El Dorado (2000), he contributes narration and songs written with Tim Rice. These are different uses of a familiar performer, and neither requires a wholesale reinvention. We would be wary of judging this scattered acting work by the scale of his musical reputation.

Kingsman: The Golden Circle (2017) makes the self-appearance more substantial, with Matthew Vaughn using a heightened version of John for comedy. We laughed at his exaggerated self, because he allows the flamboyance that makes him recognisable to become the joke. The stiffness of the delivery is still audible, particularly when the words have to do the work. But his readiness to join in makes the limitations easier to forgive. He is willing to look foolish, which gives the appearance more to offer than the simple pleasure of recognition.

His songwriting needs to be considered separately, however tempting it is to let affection for the music settle the question of his acting. The songs written with Rice for The Lion King (1994) cannot tell us how well he handles a scene. For the acting, start with Tommy, where Russell gives him a song, an elaborate costume and relatively little pretending to do.