In the back of a cab, Charli xcx drags a makeup wipe across her face. A closeup of that face, with its distinctive halo of dark hair, the lipstick-smeared pout and lush, overgrown eyebrows, is perhaps the most striking scene in her new film The Moment. Charli peels a strip of ugly stick-on gems from her lower lash line, regret and shame flashing across her face. It’s a rare raw few seconds in Aidan Zamiri’s clever and knowing satire of 21st-century pop stardom, which wonders what would have happened if the singer had lost her head after the success of her 2024 album Brat. The film is billed as a mockumentary, but its ambition to be taken seriously is no joke.
The Moment is already being positioned as Charli’s pivot from pop to the silver screen, after a buzzy premiere at the Sundance film festival last month. Charli was there to promote it, alongside two other films she’s starring in. I Want Your Sex, a dark romp of a comedy from new queer cinema pioneer Gregg Araki was mostly warmly received, though early consensus has declared The Gallerist, which stars Natalie Portman, something of a dud.
When Peter Ohs’s indie drama Erupcja premiered at the Toronto film festival last year, the New Yorker praised the “classical canniness” of Charli’s onscreen presence, singling out her “energetic yet poised performance” as emotionally avoidant party girl Bethany. She has a small but significant role in this week’s new release 100 Nights of Hero, Julia Jackman’s charming feminist fairytale, and will also appear on the soundtrack for Emerald Fennell’s adaptation of Wuthering Heights. According to IMDb, Charli the actor has roles in nine feature films and counting (other forthcoming ones include Dakota Johnson’s directorial debut A Tree Is Blue, and a remake of the 1978 mondo shocker Faces of Death). Why is she suddenly in everything, everywhere, apparently all at once?
Other pop musicians intrigued by Hollywood tend to begin by dipping a toe in the water. A bit part in Christopher Nolan’s 2017 second world war drama Dunkirk proved Harry Styles could be compelling in closeup, but did not provide the training necessary for carrying a feature-length film. When he appeared in leading roles in two movies in 2022, Don’t Worry Darling and My Policeman, there was a sense of the singer breaking into a sprint before he had learned to walk. His performance in the former is particularly vacant and one-dimensional and his acting career seems to have since petered out.
Charli’s approach to film may seem maximalist by comparison but, really, she’s starting small. As a pop star she commands the stage with main character energy, but on screen, at least so far, she seems quite happy in a supporting role. Her parts in The Gallerist, as the girlfriend of an art influencer, and as Mother Nature in Romain Gavras’s celebrity satire Sacrifice have been described as cameos. She is not top billed in I Want Your Sex either, although early reviews have praised her for playing against type – she stars as the prudish girlfriend of a young man drawn into an affair with a kinky performance artist twice his age.
100 Nights of Hero is set in a medieval fantasy world operating under strict patriarchal rule. Charli’s scenes are confined to a story within a story. As Rosa, she comes across as cute; unselfconscious, stripped of her usual vampy makeup and projecting a purity of spirit before she has even said a word. There is an unexpected softness to Rosa’s gestures, as when she runs a brush through her sister’s hair or lays her head on her father’s chest. A smiling storybook heroine forced to pretend she doesn’t know how to read is a million miles from Charli’s scowling, stomping, cigarette-smoking persona. But she sells it effortlessly.
The Moment, in which she has her first proper leading role, takes that all-powerful pop persona and gamely attempts to skewer it. She takes the piss out of her hair, her brand deals and even her old songs. She is the star but also the butt of the joke. The actual Charli probably wouldn’t be talked into letting a guy who wears prayer beads direct her concert documentary because Kylie Jenner said it was a good idea.
A hilarious (if not quite plausible) plotline featuring an ill-advised branded credit card is an example of the script’s typically tongue-in-cheek tone, but Charli’s performance as an artist under pressure is nuanced. At an event to promote the credit card, a fan enthusiastically tells Charli her music stopped him from killing himself. Charli looks stressed and caught off-guard, playing her reaction for real instead of for an easy laugh.
Her ability to manipulate her face is one of her greatest gifts as an actor. In Benito Skinner’s TV comedy Overcompensating, she mines it for comedy. Deadpan micro eye-rolls and an insincere close-mouthed smile are deployed as she plays a parody version of herself who begrudgingly performs at a college concert. “ARE YOU JO-KING?” she shouts at her hapless tour manager, exaggerating her vocal fry to brilliantly droll effect. During the concert, closeted college student Benny imagines a gleeful Charli leading the crowd in a humiliating chant. “Benny. Likes. Boys!” she yells, her eyes widening like a crazed and goofy demon.
If these roles don’t necessarily showcase a huge range, they do reveal her canniness. So far, Charli has been drawn to independent films that are playful and in line with her tastes, and to directors with a strong point of view. A lot of musicians turned actors go wrong by assuming their charisma will automatically translate to a different medium, and shooting straight for “prestige” movies. Beyoncé’s stiff turns in Dreamgirls and Cadillac Records are two classic examples of a star who exudes charm but hasn’t quite honed her on-screen craft.
The right roles are as important as the right collaborators. In A Star is Born, Lady Gaga ascends from club singer to arena headliner, a story that dovetails satisfyingly with her own. In the trashy House of Gucci, she is somehow still plausible, though she couldn’t quite transcend the dour Joker: Folie à Deux. Elsewhere, Ariana Grande was a perfect fit for the peppy but fragile Glinda in Wicked, and Tyler, the Creator’s natural exuberance was harnessed brilliantly by Josh Safdie in Marty Supreme. The musicians who are having success in the film world are the ones who seem as if they actually watch movies. Just look at A$AP Rocky, who recently gave two great performances in Spike Lee’s Highest 2 Lowest and in If I Had Legs I’d Kick You, the new film from Safdie brothers collaborator Mary Bronstein.
Charli’s taste is her secret weapon. The singer’s love of movies has been well documented on her Letterboxd account, which went viral for its eclectic, cine-literate watchlist (Jacques Rivette’s fabulously surreal Celine and Julie Go Boating remains in her top four films). In an interview on the Deeper Into Movies podcast, she told the host that watching films “is all I do, if I’m not partying or working”. Still, it’s one thing to be a fan of movies and another to make them.
“I always prefer when the initial spark is coming from me and my fellow collaborators rather than … outsourcing,” Charli told Variety when asked how she chooses her roles. In 2014, Charli cast Rose McGowan, star of Araki’s The Doom Generation, in the music video for Break the Rules, so it feels like a full-circle moment to see Charli landing a part in an Araki film.
Many of the films she has lined up seem to have come directly via her social circle rather than from the brain of a clever casting director who knows her presence will generate buzz. Charli met Ohs through their mutual friend, the playwright Jeremy O Harris. Zamiri had directed several of Charli’s music videos before they decided to make The Moment together, and Skinner said he initially connected with her at a party.
In Sacrifice, which received lukewarm reviews after its Toronto film festival premiere, she has a self-declared “tiny part” alongside her “baby brother”, the Swedish rapper Yung Lean. These smaller, low-stakes acting roles seem to be more about her having fun with her friends than shoring up her standing in Hollywood. My sense is that this attitude will take her far.
The next stop on Charli’s route to screen domination is Fennell’s Wuthering Heights. The divisive director of Promising Young Woman and Saltburn blends twisted humour with blunt, girl-boss feminism. Her glossy studio adaptation of the beloved Emily Brontë novel doesn’t, at least to my mind, seem like an obvious fit for Charli, but attaching herself to the project via its soundtrack makes sense. It allows Charli to flirt with Brontë’s brooding gothic aesthetic (and to ride the coattails of the film’s hype), while remaining safely adjacent to its director. The deft, even genius move suggests that Charli the movie star may turn out to be an auteur, rather than a vessel.
