Jon Bon Jovi Is Rocking on a New Path

From Elvis Presley onward, charismatic rock singers have struggled to make the transition to leading men on the big screen.

Movies starring Mick Jagger and David Bowie have been hit-and-miss affairs. Roger Daltrey and Sting never quite got their screen careers into second gear. And few of us wax nostalgic about the film actor formerly known as Prince.

So what makes Jon Bon Jovi think he’ll do any better?

“Yeah, I know, I know,” he says with a groan. “It’s a cliche, right? A rock star shows up on a film set and people say, ‘Oh, he must be unreliable, crazy, maybe not as prepared as he could or should be.’ I’ve heard all that.”

Bon Jovi mused on this as he sat on a jetty overlooking the Thames. He is currently before the cameras in his first starring film role, in the appropriately named “The Leading Man,” and has just shot a scene inside a historic riverside house dating from 1690. In the film, Bon Jovi plays a debonair, manipulative American actor let loose among a troupe of eccentric English actors, many of whom succumb to his charm.

“The Leading Man” co-stars Thandie Newton (“Jefferson in Paris”) and Barry Humphries, the Australian actor-writer whose alter ego is the raucous TV personality Dame Edna Everage. The film is directed by Australian John Duigan, who made 1994’s “Sirens” and last year’s “The Journey of August King.”

“This has been something I’ve pursued for five years,” Bon Jovi says. “But for the first two years, I didn’t even tell the others in the band I was taking acting lessons.”

Afraid they’d jeer?

“No. I just wanted to make sure first that I stuck with it, and then that I knew something about it. But I was so cautious, it was another year and a half before I even went to my first meeting. And I was so intimidated that first time, I walked out--even though the meeting was called by a director who had specifically asked to see me.”

He finally landed his first acting gig almost four years after his first lesson--a supporting role in last year’s “Moonlight and Valentino,” in a cast including Whoopi Goldberg, Kathleen Turner and Elizabeth Perkins.

“It was a good first role for me,” says Bon Jovi, 34. “I basically had to play a nice guy. But this time, it’s a stretch and a bigger role. I’ve worked hard preparing for it. I wanted John Duigan to be proud of me in front of the producers when I walked in on the first day and knew what I was doing.”

Duigan agreed with Bon Jovi’s assessment. “Jon promised if I took a risk on him, he’d be the most prepared person on set,” he says. “Sure enough, he knew his part back to front when we started rehearsing. He’s disciplined and a good collaborator.”

Bon Jovi became hooked on acting when he visited the set of the 1990 film “Young Guns II” (for which he wrote the theme song “Blaze of Glory”) and befriended one of the film’s stars, Emilio Estevez.

“I was intrigued that actors learned to do things that weren’t second nature--twirling guns and riding horses,” he says.

Duigan conceded that when Paul Raphael, producer of “The Leading Man,” first suggested Bon Jovi, “I thought it was something of a longshot. We’ve seen some very big names who have tried to cross over from rock music, and more often than not it hasn’t worked.

“There’s also a tendency for people to almost hope he’ll make a fool of himself. That happened with [model] Elle MacPherson in ‘Sirens,’ but most people were pleasantly surprised, I think. Like anyone else in his position, Jon has to be very good in the role.”

As for Bon Jovi, he insists his film career is a long-term proposition. “I’m keeping up with acting lessons,” he says. “In a perfect world, I’d like to keep a balance between music and films.”