10 Surprising Movie Artists

Pierce Brosnan

The Art: Cry Macho (detail), 1989

A 24x24-inch reproduction of Pearce’s original painting, this print depicts a desperado who’s definitely in touch with his sensitive side. We’d guess maybe he’d lost his sombrero, but that’s clearly not the case.

Don’t Give Up The Day Job? Actually, Brosnan has painted for donkey’s years after training as a commercial artist, so he knows his way around a canvas. Besides, the hefty sums his work fetches ($995 for this one) help out his favoured charities - we reckon he should keep hold of the brushes for a good while yet.

Dennis Hopper

The Art: Double Standard (detail), 1961

A pretty darn impressive bit of shutter-work from the late Mr Hopper, by anyone's standards. Bonus points for a nice punny title, too.

Don’t Give Up The Day Job? It'd be churlish indeed of us to try to denigrate Hopper's work - he's been critically lauded by many more knowledgeable folks than ourselves, and this certainly beats our average blurry holiday snap.

He also painted to an irritatingly high standard. We smell real talent here - yet another good reason to mourn his recent passing, as we definitely are doing.

David Lynch

The Art: Change The Fuckin' Channel , Fuckface (detail), 2009

A hilariously aggro mixed-media newie from everyone's favourite spooky polymath. This one feels a bit like gazing into domestic a mirror to us, but we're sure you all behave in a far more savoury manner when scrapping over the remote than we tend to...

Don't Give Up The Day Job? Sadly, we can't find an awful lot not to love about Lynch's artwork, either. If his twisted portraiture doesn't grab you, you may well still enjoy his dementedly nihilistic animation known as Dumbland .

Check it here , but beware - definitely too sweary (and, y'know, insane) for office viewing.

Vincent Gallo

The Art: I Gotta Find This Place (detail), 1985

A gloomy slab of mixed media on metal, appearing to depict a bowl of sinister-looking berries atop a bird table. At the bottom of an awfully murky pond.

All of which leaves us feeling pretty unsure about the title, to be honest...anyone just fancy the pub instead?

Don't Give Up The Day Job? Hmm. We know Gallo is certainly multi-talented, but we're not entirely convinced by this piece. We prefer his music projects, which have always been very decent in places - you'll find those on the site Drowning In Brown . Which, ironically, is pretty much how this painting makes us feel.

Tony Curtis

The Art: Artist's Shapes (detail), date unknown

A blotchy sort of impressionist oil job - one your nan would probably quite like, although it probably doesn't have enough cats, flowers or fruit in it to suit the most MOR tastes. Don't worry though...most of his other paintings do, as you can see .

Don't Give Up The Day Job? This has pretty much been his day job for the last 20-30 years, so we're not going to tell him how to go about it. His work isn't really to our tastes - not enough gore, zombies or flying skulls, alas - but when he's fetching up to $25k a canvas, he's obviously doing something right. Fair play, fella.

Sylvester Stallone

The Art: Bobby's Alley (detail), 1989

A faintly worrying Godzilla-stomp-type vibe here. Coming from Rambo himself, we're not that surprised. The fetching purple bath robe is a more puzzling addition, but hey - if it gets the cityscape-smashing job done, who are we to argue?

Don't Give Up The Day Job? It'd be almost too easy to dismiss Sly as a muscle-headed art incompetent, but to be honest we actually quite like this - it's moody, it's kind of nauseating, and it has a sort of giant ghost stopwatch thing hovering in the middle for no apparent reason.

Which somehow makes us want to hum Eye Of The Tiger , so it's all good.

Alejandro Jodorowsky

The Art: Annonciation (detail), 2009

Mixed media on paper. We like a famous movie demigod who's still willing to draw on paper, like we did aged eight. Mind you, we didn't draw anything as nakedly psychiatrist-baiting as this.

Don't Give Up The Day Job? If you've ever seen a Jodorowsky film, you'll know this image isn't far off what happens to your brain while watching, say, El Top o. So no - keep it up. Once a cackling wild-eyed visionary, always a cackling wild-eyed visionary.

More importantly, he's has been an acclaimed comic book artist for decades, collaborating with the lofty likes of Moebius - check here for a bibliography.

Viggo Mortensen

The Art: Self Portrait (detail), 1999-2002

Crikey. We've always known Viggo as a spiritual, deep-thinking type, but we're struggling to see this impressive piece as what we'd call a 'self-portrait'.

Unless, of course, he painted it while looking through his own letter box.

Don't Give Up The Day Job? If you ask us, this looks like a pretty stonking piece of postmodern brush-wizardry. We also happen to know Mortensen takes very good photographs indeed. Talented git.

Right now though, we're still firmly stuck on his canvas-based offerings. Get your fill at this excellent little exhibition site.

Jeff Bridges

The Art: Website doodle (detail), date unknown

It's a doodle. From his website. Which is entirely hand-drawn in the same style. There doesn't seem to be a tremendous amount more to say, other than that it may or may not be called Rooster . Nice though, innit?

Don't Give Up The Day Job? Well, obviously not - he's one of our favourite leading men, so we never want to see that happen. But perhaps he could carve out a nice little sideline as Hollywood's (sunnier) answer to David Shrigley or something? Maybe even Daniel Johnston ..?

Check Jeff's site , anyway - it's wonderfully mental, in a bored-kid-after-five-colas sort of way.

Anthony Hopkins

The Art: We haven't been able to find out what this broody, vaguely nightmarish vision was called, because Hopkins' art site was undergoing a reshuffle at the time of writing.

Definitely more Silence Of The Lambs than Legends Of The Fall though, right? Which pleases us greatly.

Don't Give Up The Day Job? We're not sure we'd feel entirely comfortable judging a man who can chill us to the very core with a single mention of fava beans.

Suffice to say, we probably wouldn't want this on our bedroom wall - we whimper ourselves to sleep often enough as it is - but it might be quite handy in the front yard, as a trespasser deterrent.