Bob Dylan Starred in a Film but Kept Getting Distracted by the Talent of His Co-Stars
In 2003, Bob Dylan starred in the film Masked and Anonymous with a number of Hollywood heavy hitters. His co-stars included Jeff Bridges, John Goodman, Luke Wilson, Jessica Lange, Penelope Cruz, Val Kilmer, and many others. Dylan didn’t have nearly as much acting experience as his co-stars. While he had a leading role in the film, his inexperience caused some issues. Dylan seemed far more interested in watching his castmates than he was in giving a performance of his own.
Bob Dylan found his co-stars in a film riveting to watch
Masked and Anonymous had a stacked cast at least partly because the actors wanted a chance to work with Dylan.
“I think John [Goodman] really responded to the part, but a lot of the other people responded to just the idea of working with Bob,” director Larry Charles told Uproxx in 2023. “We were able to attract a lot of people because of that, like Penelope Cruz and Jessica Lange.”
As a result, Dylan found himself in the middle of scenes with award-winning actors. He thought they were so compelling that he often forgot he was supposed to be acting too.
“Bob would be so into what was going on in the scenes,” Charles said. “There’s a scene where John Goodman and Jessica Lange are going back and forth and he’s sitting there and he’s got dialogue. But he would get so into their acting that he would forget that he was in the scene. And so he would forget his lines, he’d forget his cues. Also, the idea of blocking, going from point A to point B in the scene, these things were not really natural to him.”
Bob Dylan brought a number of ideas to the table while working on ‘Masked and Anonymous’
Despite his inexperience, Dylan was a co-writer and star of the film. He had a number of creative ideas on how to enhance the movie, but Charles said he had to shut some of them down.
“He had a lot of very interesting ideas about how he wanted to do his performance. He tried a number of accents on me. I was like, ‘What is this? I don’t think this is right.’ One time he wanted the whole movie to be in dance. Everything was going to be a dance. He had called Toni Basil, and I was like, ‘We don’t have the time to choreograph the entire movie like that.’”
Even though the film did not go forward with all Dylan’s suggestions, critics found the film bizarre and did not rate it highly.
What films has Bob Dylan acted in?
While Dylan didn’t have as much acting experience as his co-stars, this was not his first time on a film set. He had his first dramatic role in 1973 in Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid. In 1978, he released the film Renaldo & Clara. While the film relies on documentary interviews and concert footage, it also includes fictional vignettes.
After a bit of a break from acting, Dylan got back in front of the camera in 1987’s Hearts of Fire. He likely didn’t have to do much character work for the film, as he played a reclusive musician.
