Eric Burdon - Film Career

Film Career

Burdon wanted to act in the movie Blowup (1966). Director Michelangelo Antonioni wanted to use him as a musician in a club scene. Burdon turned the role down because he had acted in movies before where he sang songs. He disbanded The Animals and went to California where he met Jim Morrison and came to the realisation that his real inspiration was acting.

Later, he turned down major roles in Zabriskie Point and Performance (both 1970).

In 1973 he formed The Eric Burdon Band and recorded the soundtrack for his own film project, Mirage. He spent much money to make this film, produced as a motion picture for Atlantic. The film and the soundtrack were to be released in July 1974, but somehow they never were. The soundtrack was released in 2008.

In 1979 he acted in the TV movie The 11th Victim. Then in the German motion picture Gibbi - Westgermany (1980). In 1982 he starred in another German motion picture, Comeback, again as a singer.

In 1991 he had a cameo appearance in The Doors.

In 1998 he acted as himself in the Greek movie My Brother and I, followed by a bigger role in the German motion picture Snow on New Year's Eve (1999).

In the following years he was credited in many documentaries and in an independent movie called Fabulous Shiksa in Distress (2003), along with Ned Romero and Ted Markland.

In 2007 he performed the traditional "Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child" in the drama festival film The Blue Hour and in a documentary about Joshua Tree, where Burdon lives, called Nowhere Now (2008).