Top 10 footballers-turned-actors
Move over, Vinnie: here comes action star Fitz Hall
1 In his Element
Unbelievably, journeyman defender ‘One Size’ Fitz Hall had a minor role in Luc Besson’s 1997 sci-fi classic, The Fifth Element. “I try to keep it quiet but I’m there at the start,” Hall has said. “You can’t miss me. I still get phone calls from people, saying: ‘Is that you? There’s a little kid who looks just like you!’ I was only 12, but I’ve not changed.” It’s a bit like discovering Steve Claridge was in Blade Runner. If only…
2 Reina the Roman
If we were remaking The Fifth Element with footballers, then alongside Fitz we’d have former Liverpool keeper Pepe Reina in the Bruce Willis role. In 2013, he impressed in Invictus – a comedy short from award-winning director Javier Fesser – in which he plays a bungling Roman centurion and performs a passable Willis impression. “I’ve never laughed so much,” said the Napoli keeper. “We must have done one scene 25 times, because I couldn’t stop.”
3 Trojan’s hoarse
The Arsenal Stadium Mystery is one of those rarities: a football drama that isn’t pants. The tightly plotted thriller centres on the poisoning of a player for fictitious amateur side Trojans during a match against the Gunners. Outside-left Cliff Bastin gets plenty of screen time, while manager George Allison crops up with some classic lines, including: “It’s 1-0 to the Arsenal and that’s the way we like it.”
4 “Go ahead, punk…”
Part Roberto Carlos, part Jeremy Corbyn, part Clint Eastwood, Germany’s legendarily-afroed left-back Paul Breitner was always more than your average footballer. An outspoken admirer of Chairman Mao, he also turned his hand to acting on occasion, appearing in the curious German Western Potato Fritz (also known as Montana Trap) about Teutonic settlers in 1850s Montana, and looking just as natural as grizzled frontiersman Sergeant Stark as he did on the pitch for Bayern Munich and Real Madrid. Presumably, it made his day.
5 Cuauhtemoc’s love triumph
In between becoming his country’s third-highest goalscorer and the current mayor of Cuernavaca, Cuauhtemoc ‘bunny hop’ Blanco has acted in the melodramatic telenovelas loved by Mexicans. In October 2010, Blanco played the fireman love interest of clothing-averse model Larissa Riquelme – who became Paraguay’s most visible supporter at that summer’s World Cup after popping a mobile phone down her two upfront – in Triumph of Love. “This is a challenge for me,” said Blanco. “People will make fun of me, but I don’t care.”
6 Ally’s Dark Knight
Robert Duvall has won an Oscar. Michael Keaton was Batman. Both,
however, heavily soiled their copybooks by appearing alongside former Rangers forward Ally Mccoist in A Shot at Glory, a 2000 stinker about fictional Scottish minnows Kilnockie FC. Mccoist has a hefty lead role as Jackie Mcquillan, a troubled ex-celtic striker (yes, really) as the team fight American owner Keaton’s MK Dons-like attempts to move the club to Dublin. Also featuring Owen Coyle, it artfully traverses every sports and Scottish cliche imaginable, while Mccoist’s acting is as demented as Duvall’s Highlands accent. Och aye! 7 Football’s a doddle. Reading, however... Andres Iniesta is quite the budding silver screen star. The Spanish midfielder has an excellent cameo in ¿Quien Mato A Bambi? (Who Killed Bambi?), a farce in which he gets hit in the face by a car door, and has done some voiceover work, including as Albino in the Spanish cut of animation The Pirates! “He said overdubbing was harder than playing football,” cheered director Rafael Luis Calvo Ribot. We’ll believe that when Joe Pasquale wins the Champions League. 8 Blades of glory
Thunderous Sheffield Wednesday left-back Mel Sterland upset Owls fans when he portrayed the captain of city rivals United in Sean Bean vehicle When Saturday Comes. “It was hard to pull on a United top,” he said, “but I wore my blue and white shirt underneath.” Crafty. 9 “Cock to stage, please. Cock to stage” Chelsea, Everton and Millwall forward Jack Cock was one of those implausibly heroic early-20th century figures. Cock, a decorated First World War soldier, scored 234 goals in 391 games, won two England caps and was also a renowned music-hall star with rugged good looks and a rich tenor voice. And he ran a pub in south London. And he appeared in two films: 1920’s The Winning Goal, and The Great Game a decade later. Phew. 10 Frank’s le beef
French World Cup-winner Frank Leboeuf has acted in several major stage plays and alongside Oscar-winning Eddie Redmayne as Stephen Hawking’s Swiss doctor in The Theory of Everything, but he once moaned to FFT: “I do seem to die a lot in the parts I get. Hopefully one day I’ll be in a film where I don’t get killed. I could play a romantic guy. But the parts George Clooney gets? Maybe not.” Don’t do yourself down, Frank.