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They are known from the movies, but some of the most famous actors at the Hollywood studio perhaps have a second, no less exciting talent: some of them are visual artists. Painting, drawing – actors undeniably know how to express themselves, just as well with a camera or in their off-camera studio. In a life dominated by the visual expression – in which acting itself is no more than a sophisticated sense of visual narration – many actors apparently express themselves with equal satisfaction on canvas or sketchpad. Here are some of the best multi-talented actors in the art world.

Creative actors who paint

Johnny Depp

In his free time, the actor Johnny Depp has turned his creative energies to painting, developing a pop-art style that extols the ecstatic colours and inner torment of a maverick personality. He has painted mostly portraits, all with a dark bent: Keith Richards, Hunter S Thompson, Jeannette Christina Ferndand ‘J diver’ Timmons – all these, and many more. But now he has extended his creative gunsight to Tarot. With the launch of his art collection, this year 2022, he has embraced the 19th-century interest in card staging the excitement of life. Depp’s clothes-line of Tarot cards include: the Lovers, the Empress, the Emperor, and the Power. According to Depp, these crucial archetypes from our deck of life’s victories and defeats have been inspired by ‘life, dreams, and the subconscious’. I add: their style is symbolist.

photo: people.com; artandcollections.com

Jim Carrey

Renowned as a slapstick comedian and the village idiot of Ace Ventura and The Mask, Jim Carrey’s artistic future doesn’t seem related to physical humour. His colourful, often politically charged paintings have garnered the attention of many in the art world. Over the past few years, he’s filled dozens of massive canvases with bold images and dynamic colour range. Among his subjects are We the People, the Donald Trump Question, and a series of portraits exploring identity, mental health and other personal struggles, as well as a series of abstract landscapes. His paintings are just as daring, bold and unapologetic as his acting.

photo: news.artnet.com

James Franco

James Franco is known for his versatility in Hollywood. He fills his schedule with acting, directing and teaching, but he’s also a polymath visual artist: a selection of Franco’s installations, paintings and mixed-media are currently on show at the Jack Shainman Gallery in New York, where they’ve been gaining as much attention as his films, and bruiting the line between celebrity and artist, or helping to eviscerate received notions of both. Performance artist Marina Abramović is currently working on a film about James Franco.

Anthony Hopkins

For years, legendary actor Sir Anthony Hopkins, known for his rich performances in films such as The Silence of the Lambs (1991) and Theremis Forsa (1982), has been unveiling his paintings. At first glance, Hopkins’s psychedelic, abstractionist, multicoloured canvases look like they could be reflections of the actor’s own emotional state. In fact, Hopkins says that he surprises most art critics and followers because his paintings often seem more familiar than the aloof characters found in his screen roles. Despite being known for playing a cold-blooded killer in Thelime of the Lambs (1991) or a tormented intellectual in Sirus Bone (1989), his paintings reveal a side of Hopkins that rarely shows in his screen roles.

photo: papercitymag.com

Lucy Liu

Though best known for her turns in films such as Charlie’s Angels and Kill Bill, Lucy Liu has been an artist for more than 20 years under the name Yu Ling. She paints, makes collages and mixed-media works, and has exhibited her abstract and figurative artwork internationally. It would be easy to add Liu to a long list of Hollywood pretty people with art careers – think of Courtney Love or Angelina Jolie, both of whom own galleries. But it’s clear that academy award nominee Liu is far from a dilettante.

photo: visualdiplomacyusa.blogspot.com

Viggo Mortensen

Just as Viggo Mortensen’s artistic output is as varied as his acting career, so the star of the The Lord of the Rings trilogy (1999-2003) changed the medium of his art from acting to painting, photography and poetry. If his film portrayals of Aragorn in the The Lord of the Rings trilogy of fantasy films (2001-2003) provided the focus for his international fame, Mortensen has since amassed a growing reputation as a painter, photographer and poet. If anything it is the visual mediums of painting and photography, not prose or poetry, through which Mortensen chooses to express, with photography in particular, playing various roles and being woven into the pictorial fabric of his art. Multiple talents and various mediums, all serving the other towards some expressionist end – all part of Mortensen’s creative bag of tricks. Three books of his art and photography have been published to date (2009-11). Their contents are intensely personal in nature. Repeatedly combining the abstract, photography and language with literary/cultural references from diverse origins: American, Aboriginal, Mexican, Japanese, Swahili and Hindi, Mortensen synthesizes their imagery, language and symbols to create powerful visual statements that are always challenging, but with a clear underlying narrative. Like Mortensen as an actor, his statements as an autodidactic painter and photographer are always heartfelt, eclectic and intuitive, rarely formulaic and never predictable.

photo: artnet.com

Pierce Brosnan

Although Pierce Brosnan will forever be James Bond, his painting – on the quiet side of his busy life as an actor – is often full of feeling. Colour and expressive brushwork convey landscapes and portraits in his work. Painting helped him through the days after the death of his first wife, Cassandra Harris, in 1991 from cancer, and also some 15 years later with the loss of his daughter, Charlotte, who died from ovarian cancer, having inherited it from her mother. For Brosnan, painting became an act of healing that soon became an unbridled form of pleasure: ‘Handling paint energises me like no other activity. It has become a passion.’ His work is auctioned to raise money for charity.

photo: piercebrosnan.com

Sylvester Stallone

Sylvester Stallone is known for action movies such as Rocky (1976) and Rambo (1982), but his painting career was well under way before he hit the limelight as an actor. Stallone has been painting since the 1970s, creating art that is deeply emotive, almost autobiographical at times, frequently abstract expressionist, with his art commonly led by explosive strokes of paint and eye-watering colours, producing an altogether darker image to the character he plays in his films. Stallone first exhibited some of his paintings in galleries in the late-’70s, and has since sold works in locations across the globe. With the help of friends and galleries, Stallone is keen to focus on this newfound interest, knowing that it allows him to express what is going on inside in a way that he says acting never could.

photo: artsper.com

Marilyn Monroe

Despite that Marilyn Monroe is one of our most iconic actors in film history, few know that her artistic talents were not limited to the big screen. Although less recognised than her performances, Monroe’s artwork – primarily sketches and small paintings – offers a quieter and more contemplative side of the star. Her production of personal art, including poetry, further reveals aspects of her inner world, one quite distinct from her public persona.

photo: anothermag.com

James Dean

ames Dean was the archetype of the renegade teen and he was not only a great actor but an artist as well. Part-time painter, he drew and sometimes sculpted. He was involved in redecorating in his free time and showed real promise, but the life snuffed out the art early. His art remains something of a mystery and, to some degree, it is meant to be that way. It complements his overall legacy as one of the great 20th-century cultural icons.

photo: Albertis-window.com

Jane Seymour

Jane Seymour’s Dr Quinn, Medicine Woman and Live and Let Die oeuvre is huge, but very few people know she’s also an accomplished painter of florals featuring bright colours. She loves the beauty of nature and life, and through her many paintings – some of which she’s exhibited in galleries around the world – she tries to connect with people on another level. Her style is gentle and light, the way she lives her own life.

photo: guideposts.org

Tony Curtis

Following the footsteps of many Hollywood legends, Tony Curtis spent the latter part of his life focusing his creative energies on painting. Curtis’s painting career began in the 1980s and often featured vivid colour and semi-abstract shapes. His paintings, in fact, gained enough traction to please the artist, critics and the art buying public, with Curtis’s artwork showing up in galleries throughout the world. His painting demonstrated that even though his acting ability was legendary, his creative energies had as much range and depth as his acting career.

photo: artsy.net

These art-star celebrities show that creativity has no boundaries: on stage or on the canvas, they cross the line between celebrity and creativity to make iconic works that far outlive their performances. Celebrity works of art give us a deeper insight into these cultural celebrities, and a potent reminder that being an artist goes beyond one medium: we might all have an inner painter.