Top 10 Actors Who Are Amazing Musicians

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Top 10 Actors Who Are Amazing Musicians
Bryan Berlin

Some of Hollywood’s biggest names lead double creative lives and their musical credentials run far deeper than celebrity vanity projects. From Jared Leto’s 15 million album sales with Thirty Seconds to Mars to Jamie Foxx’s classically trained piano chops and chart-topping R&B hits, these ten actor-musicians have built genuine, substantial music careers alongside their screen work. Several started as musicians first. A few have Grammys. One literally set a Guinness World Record for touring. What unites them is that music is not a side hustle it is an essential part of who they are.

Jared Leto turned arena rock into a parallel empire (Top 10 Actors Who Are Amazing Musicians)

Before he won an Oscar for Dallas Buyers Club, Jared Leto co-founded Thirty Seconds to Mars with his brother Shannon in 1998. He serves as lead vocalist, rhythm guitarist, bassist, keyboardist, and principal songwriter, the band’s creative engine. Their six studio albums have sold over 15 million copies worldwide, a figure that would be the envy of many full-time rock bands.

The band’s trajectory moved from the Bob Ezrin-produced space-rock of their 2002 debut through the platinum breakthrough of A Beautiful Lie (2005), whose single “The Kill” spent over 50 weeks on the Alternative Songs chart, the longest run in the chart’s history at that time. “From Yesterday” hit No. 1 on the US Alternative Songs chart, and their third album This Is War (2009) spawned two more No. 1 Alternative singles in “Kings and Queens” and “This Is War.”

Perhaps the most telling measure of Leto’s musical commitment was the Into the Wild Tour supporting This Is War: 309 shows over two years, earning a Guinness World Record for the longest concert tour by a rock band. The band has won nine MTV Europe Music Awards, three MTV Video Music Awards, and a Billboard Music Award.

Their legal battle with EMI over a $30 million contract dispute, documented in the award-winning film Artifact (2012), revealed an artist willing to fight a major label for creative control. Leto famously refuses to let his Hollywood fame be used to promote the band, and directs many of their music videos under the pseudonym Bartholomew Cubbins. Their most recent album, It’s the End of the World but It’s a Beautiful Day (2023), saw them pivot toward concise indie-electronic pop, with no song exceeding three and a half minutes.

Jamie Foxx was a musician long before he was a movie star (Top 10 Actors Who Are Amazing Musicians)

Jamie Foxx’s musical ability is not an afterthought, it is foundational. He began playing piano at age five under his grandmother’s strict direction in Terrell, Texas, practicing one full hour every day. By fifteen, he was musical director and choir leader at his local Baptist church. He earned a classical piano scholarship to United States International University in San Diego, where he studied composition. He came to Los Angeles originally to pursue music, not acting.

That training proved decisive when he portrayed Ray Charles in Ray (2004). Charles personally tested Foxx’s abilities at the piano before granting approval. The Oscar that followed opened the door for Foxx’s commercial music career to flourish. His 2005 album Unpredictable debuted at No. 2 on the Billboard 200, eventually reaching No. 1 and selling nearly two million copies, making Foxx only the fourth artist in history to both win an Academy Award for acting and land a No. 1 album, after Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby, and Barbra Streisand.

His hit singles read like a mid-2000s R&B hall of fame: “Slow Jamz” with Twista and Kanye West reached No. 1 on the Hot 100; “Gold Digger” with Kanye West dominated the chart for ten consecutive weeks; and “Blame It” featuring T-Pain sat atop the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart for 14 consecutive weeks, the longest No. 1 run in 15 years.

“Blame It” also won the Grammy Award for Best R&B Performance at the 52nd Annual Grammys. Across five studio albums and collaborations with Drake, Lil Wayne, Chris Brown, and Justin Timberlake, Foxx has amassed over 20 Billboard Hot 100 entries. In 2025, he released the gospel single “Grandma’s Hands” and opened the Jamie Foxx Performing Arts Center in his hometown.

Johnny Depp has been a guitarist since before he was an actor (Top 10 Actors Who Are Amazing Musicians)

Music did not follow acting for Johnny Depp, it preceded it. His mother gave him a guitar at age twelve, and by 1980 he was lead guitarist of The Kids, a Florida band that opened for Iggy Pop, the Ramones, Talking Heads, and U2. When the band relocated to Los Angeles and dissolved around 1984, it was Depp’s then-wife who introduced him to Nicolas Cage, who steered him toward acting. “Music will always be my first love,” Depp told Rolling Stone. “I pick up the guitar and space out and drool.”

His musical résumé since reads like a who’s who of rock history. He co-wrote “Mary” on Rock City Angels’ 1988 Geffen debut. He co-founded the band P in 1993 with Butthole Surfers’ Gibby Haynes, with guest appearances from Flea and Steve Jones of the Sex Pistols, releasing a self-titled album on Capitol Records. He played slide guitar on Oasis’s “Fade In-Out” from Be Here Now (1997), contributed to albums by Iggy Pop, Patti Smith, Aerosmith, and Marilyn Manson, and co-wrote songs for partner Vanessa Paradis.

In 2012, Depp co-founded the Hollywood Vampires with Alice Cooper and Joe Perry, named after Cooper’s legendary 1970s drinking club at the Rainbow Bar & Grill. The supergroup has released two studio albums and a live record, performed at the Grammy Awards, and played to 100,000 fans at Rock in Rio. Their 2026 European tour, including London’s O2 Arena, is already confirmed.

But Depp’s most poignant musical collaboration may be 18 (2022) with Jeff Beck, 13 tracks on which Depp sang lead and played multiple instruments. It peaked at No. 3 in Switzerland and No. 11 in the UK. It was Beck’s final studio album before his death in January 2023. Depp is a true multi-instrumentalist, credited across recordings with guitar, bass, drums, percussion, keyboards, and vocals.

Zooey Deschanel quietly built indie pop’s most charming catalog (Top 10 Actors Who Are Amazing Musicians)

Zooey Deschanel planned to be a musician before Hollywood intervened. She sang throughout high school, attended performing arts camps, and envisioned a career in musical theatre. When director Jon Favreau heard her sing on the set of Elf (2003), he rewrote the film to include more musical numbers her duet of “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” with Will Ferrell became one of the movie’s most memorable scenes.

She met guitarist M. Ward on the set of The Go-Getter in 2007, and the two formed She & Him after she sent him years’ worth of home demos. Ward called immediately, wanting to record them properly. “I always thought I would be able to sing and act,” Deschanel has said, “but at a certain point, it became difficult for me to share the music part. I didn’t really know exactly who to collaborate with until I met Matt.”

The duo’s vintage-inflected indie pop, drawing on 1960s girl groups and Brian Wilson’s lush arrangements, struck a nerve. Their debut Volume One (2008) was named Paste Magazine’s Album of the Year, and Volume Two (2010) peaked at No. 6 on the Billboard 200.

Across seven studio albums on Merge and Columbia Records including two beloved Christmas records and 2022’s Melt Away: A Tribute to Brian Wilson, which featured Wilson himself, She & Him have sold over one million albums in the US alone. Deschanel writes virtually all of the original material, playing piano, ukulele, and banjo alongside her distinctive vocals. Brian Wilson praised the tribute album: “Zooey and Matt did such mind-blowing versions of our songs. The harmonies are beautiful and right on.”

Jeff Bridges found his musical voice through a fictional country singer (Top 10 Actors Who Are Amazing Musicians)

Jeff Bridges sold two songs to Quincy Jones at age twenty, but it took playing a washed-up country musician in Crazy Heart (2009) to unlock his recording career. The film, which earned Bridges his Academy Award for Best Actor, featured him singing five tracks on a soundtrack co-produced by his longtime friend T Bone Burnett. The two had met on the set of Heaven’s Gate in 1980 and had been musical collaborators ever since.

The Crazy Heart soundtrack won two Grammy Awards, and its theme song “The Weary Kind” took home the Oscar for Best Original Song. Bridges channeled the momentum into his self-titled 2011 album on Blue Note Records, produced by Burnett, which debuted at No. 25 on the Billboard 200 and No. 10 on Top Country Albums. He formed a touring band called The Abiders, named after his iconic “The Dude abides” line from The Big Lebowski, and has performed steadily since.

Bridges has also released the ambient Sleeping Tapes (2015), which Pitchfork rated 7.8/10, with all proceeds going to charity, and in April 2025, the archival collection Slow Magic, 1977–1978 surfaced never-before-heard songs recorded with friends in a Venice, California warehouse nearly fifty years ago. “Pretty wild that this thing that happened around 50 years ago wants to bloom,” Bridges remarked. “I guess weirdness is what’s happening these days.” His musical philosophy mirrors his acting ethos: “People like to put you in this slot or that slot. Everybody likes to assume that you can only do one thing.”

Kevin Bacon has been rocking for three decades and counting (Top 10 Actors Who Are Amazing Musicians)

The Bacon Brothers might be the most quietly prolific band on this list. Kevin Bacon and his older brother Michael have been performing together professionally since 1994 over thirty years, releasing twelve albums of what they call “Forosoco”: a blend of folk, rock, soul, and country. Kevin plays guitar, percussion, mandolin, and harmonica; Michael, an Emmy-winning composer, covers guitar, cello, keyboards, and more.

Their longevity is remarkable. From their 1997 debut Forosoco through 2024’s Ballad of the Brothers, the band has maintained a steady output and touring schedule that has outlasted many professional acts. The New Yorker praised their “sharply executed rock that has a blue-collar, rootsy edge,” noting that they manage to shake off the Hollywood albatross. Their 2018 single “Tom Petty T-Shirt” hit No. 8 on iTunes, received SiriusXM airplay, and debuted on The Tonight Show. They have played Carnegie Hall, the Grand Ole Opry, and toured Japan.

“I like risks,” Kevin has said. “And there’s nothing more risky about being a well-known actor and playing in a rock band.” His son Travis has joined as a producer on recent recordings, and wife Kyra Sedgwick provides background vocals, making it something of a family enterprise. The Bacon Brothers’ Freestanding Tour continues into 2026 with dates across the US.

Jada Pinkett Smith took on the metal world and won respect the hard way (Top 10 Actors Who Are Amazing Musicians)

Of all the entries on this list, Jada Pinkett Smith’s musical turn is perhaps the most unexpected. In 2002, she formed Wicked Wisdom, a nu metal band, and stepped to the microphone as frontwoman. “I listened to all kinds of metal as a kid. Metallica, Guns N’ Roses,” she told MTV. “I would always look at Axl Rose and say, ‘Why aren’t there any chicks out there doing this now?'”

The defining chapter came at Ozzfest 2005. Sharon Osbourne personally added the band to the festival after catching them at a small LA club. Will Smith, who served as executive producer on their self-titled 2006 album, later wrote in his memoir: “Ozzfest is the least African American event outside of that broom-and-big-ass-hockey-puck thing they do at the Olympics.” Pinkett Smith faced death threats and visits from neo-Nazis, and the initial hostility was severe. But the band won audiences over through sheer force of performance. “Once word got out that we weren’t a joke, people started coming out and by the sixth or seventh gig we were on fire,” guitarist Pocket Honore recalled.

As one of the very few Black women fronting a metal band at the time, Pinkett Smith broke barriers that extended well beyond celebrity novelty. AllMusic called her “an expressive, commanding singer.” The band’s self-titled album peaked at No. 44 on Billboard’s Heatseekers chart. Though Wicked Wisdom went dormant after 2006, they reunited in 2021 on Red Table Talk with Jada’s daughter Willow who grew up attending shows as a five-year-old on a security guard’s shoulders, joining on stage.

Juliette Lewis traded Oscar-worthy intensity for punk rock abandon (Top 10 Actors Who Are Amazing Musicians)

Juliette Lewis channeled the same feral energy that earned her an Oscar nomination for Cape Fear (1991) into a legitimate rock career. At thirty, she realized, as she put it, “I didn’t do the thing that lived in the heart of the little girl.” She formed Juliette and the Licks in 2003, debuting at Johnny Depp’s Viper Room, with Hole’s Patty Schemel on drums.

The band’s punk-garage sound and Lewis’s stage presence, compared by the Boston Herald to “Jagger-like swagger and the volatile air of a young Patti Smith” earned genuine critical respect. Their second album Four on the Floor (2006) featured Dave Grohl on guest drums and scored a UK chart entry with “Hot Kiss” at No. 50. They toured the Vans Warped Tour and played major festivals across Europe and South America.

After a hiatus, Lewis pivoted to the more atmospheric Terra Incognita (2009), produced by Omar Rodríguez-López of The Mars Volta, and continued collaborating with artists from The Prodigy to Cage the Elephant. The Licks have reunited intermittently, most recently appearing at festivals in 2024. Lewis also lent her voice to The Prodigy’s Always Outnumbered, Never Outgunned and voiced the host of the fictional Radio Broker station in Grand Theft Auto IV.

Russell Crowe has been making music for over forty years (Top 10 Actors Who Are Amazing Musicians)

Russell Crowe’s music career is not a footnote, it is a parallel timeline that stretches back before most people knew his name. Under the stage name “Russ Le Roq,” he released singles in New Zealand in 1982, a full decade before his breakout film roles. His path to cinema actually ran through musical theatre: a director spotted him performing in Blood Brothers and pulled him into film. “My journey to film starts with playing in bands, touring around, releasing records,” Crowe has said.

In 1992, he formed 30 Odd Foot of Grunts (TOFOG), whose name originated from a dubbing session on the set of Virtuosity. The band released four albums, with Bastard Life or Clarity (2001) reaching No. 7 on the Australian Albums chart. After TOFOG disbanded in 2005, Crowe partnered with Alan Doyle of Great Big Sea for The Ordinary Fear of God, releasing the folk-rock album My Hand, My Heart which included “Mr. Harris,” a tribute to his late Gladiator co-star Richard Harris, written after attending a rugby match where Ireland beat Australia for the first time in 37 years. “I knew that Richard was there,” Crowe said.

His current project, Indoor Garden Party, formed in 2017 with Doyle, actor Scott Grimes, and Les Misérables actress Samantha Barks, has released an album and tours regularly. In 2023, they donated all proceeds from a sold-out Bologna concert to flood victims. In 2024, Crowe played Glastonbury’s Acoustic Stage. Critical reception has been uneven, some reviewers note he is a better raconteur than vocalist, but Crowe’s persistence across more than four decades speaks to a musician who refuses to let anyone else’s opinion define what he is allowed to be.

Scarlett Johansson chose art over accessibility (Top 10 Actors Who Are Amazing Musicians)

Scarlett Johansson could have made a sleek pop record. Instead, she made a Tom Waits covers album. Her 2008 debut Anywhere I Lay My Head, produced by TV on the Radio’s Dave Sitek and featuring David Bowie on two tracks, reimagined ten deep cuts from Waits’s catalog through layers of reverb, electronic textures, and art-rock atmospherics. Critics split sharply: NME called it “a brilliant album” with “ghostly magic,” while Entertainment Weekly named it the year’s worst. It peaked at No. 126 on the Billboard 200 but performed better in Europe, reaching No. 15 in Switzerland and No. 25 in Austria.

The choice of material was deliberate and revealing. Johansson bypassed Waits’s hits for obscure later-period songs, a move that signaled artistic ambition over commercial instinct. “I was never looking to make a pop album,” she explained. Her follow-up, Break Up (2009) with Pete Yorn, modeled on the Serge Gainsbourg-Brigitte Bardot duets of the 1960s, was certified Gold in France and featured the warm, understated chemistry of two vocalists recorded over just a few afternoons. The pair reunited for the Apart EP in 2018.

Johansson also formed a short-lived all-female group called the Singles with Este Haim of Haim, and brought her vocal abilities to animated films including Sing and Sing 2. Her musical output is modest in volume but ambitious in vision, the mark of an artist who treated music as a creative pursuit rather than a brand extension.

Conclusion For Top 10 Actors Who Are Amazing Musicians

What distinguishes these ten performers from the long history of celebrity musicians is commitment. Leto’s 309-show tour, Foxx’s lifelong piano discipline, Depp’s four decades of guitar playing, Bacon’s 30-year band, these are not dabbling. The most successful crossovers share a common pattern: they brought the same obsessive preparation to music that made them great actors. Foxx studied classical composition before he ever performed comedy.

Crowe toured pubs before he stepped onto a film set. Deschanel wrote songs for years in private before finding the right collaborator. The least commercially successful entries on this list, Johansson’s artfully uncommercial Waits covers, Pinkett Smith’s confrontational metal are arguably the most interesting, precisely because they reveal artists following creative impulses regardless of how the market might respond. In every case, the music is not a sideshow. It is the other half of the story.

Sources For Top 10 Actors Who Are Amazing Musicians

Jared Leto / Thirty Seconds to Mars (Top 10 Actors Who Are Amazing Musicians)

Jamie Foxx (Top 10 Actors Who Are Amazing Musicians)

Johnny Depp (Top 10 Actors Who Are Amazing Musicians)

Zooey Deschanel

Jeff Bridges (Top 10 Actors Who Are Amazing Musicians)

Kevin Bacon (Top 10 Actors Who Are Amazing Musicians)

Jada Pinkett Smith (Top 10 Actors Who Are Amazing Musicians)

Juliette Lewis (Top 10 Actors Who Are Amazing Musicians)

Russell Crowe (Top 10 Actors Who Are Amazing Musicians)

Scarlett Johansson (Top 10 Actors Who Are Amazing Musicians)

George Millington
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