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11 Actors Who Totally Faked Their Singing For Movies And 12 Who Sang Nearly Every Note

1. Did sing: Austin Butler really sang for his role in Elvis and did months of training to get his voice as close as possible to the real thing. Later in the movie, as Elvis gets older, snippets of Elvis’s actual voice were blended with Austin’s to make the vocal tone as accurate as it could be.

ET / youtube.com

3. Did sing: Andrew Garfield actually learned to sing so he could play Jonathan Larson in Tick, Tick…Boom! He worked with several vocal coaches and learned how to play piano for the movie.

Netflix / Everett Collection

Lin-Manuel Miranda was interested in Andrew Garfield after seeing his performance in Angels in America, so he reached out to Greg Miele, a mutual friend, asking if Andrew could sing. Greg shared, “I said ‘Of course he can sing! He has the voice of an angel!’ And I’d never heard Andrew sing. As soon as Lin left, I called Andrew, and I said ‘Can you sing? Because I just lied to Lin-Manuel.'” Lin also said, “I asked [Andrew], ‘Can you sing?’ And he said, ‘When are you making the movie?’ And I said, ‘Not for at least a year.’ And he goes, ‘A year. Okay. Then I can sing.’”

Niko Tavernise / 20th Century Fox / Everett Collection

Loren Allred, a former contestant on The Voice, sang the song during The Greatest Showman‘s workshop before 20th Century Fox even signed on to produce the film. Rebecca told Collider, “If I would F-U-C-K that up, I would be embarrassed. So I thought, ‘Loren, you just go for it, girl!’” This year, Loren appeared on Britain’s Got Talent, saying “I was more comfortable singing behind the scenes, but I kind of feel like the song was meant for me, and now I’m ready to put a face to the song.”

Clay Enos / Warner Bros / Everett Collection

Bradley worked with a vocal coach for several months before shooting the movie and even shared that performing with Lady Gaga urged him to sing for real. He said, “When I knew I wanted to do this movie and have [Lady Gaga] and sing everything live was that I had to create these guys that are so idiosyncratic and iconic and, you know, they’re like rock stars.” Even Lady Gaga was shocked by his singing voice and said, “He opened his mouth to sing. I was blown away by his voice because he sings from his gut, and he sings from his soul. I was overwhelmed by his ability to tell a story with his voice.”

20th Century Fox / Everett Collection

Rami even joked that “no one wants to hear [him] sing.” In an interview with Rolling Stone, producer Graham King explained that while Rami could imitate Freddie’s mannerisms and overbite, he just couldn’t get the voice. When listening to Marc Martel’s voice he said, “Literally, you could close your eyes and it’s Freddie. And that’s a very tough thing to do.”

Alex Bailey / 20th Century Fox / Everett Collection

7. Did sing: Heath Ledger actually covered “Can’t Take My Eyes Off You” for that bleachers moment in 10 Things I Hate About You.

Buena Vista Pictures

Director Gil Junger shared how impressed he was with Heath in that moment: “He was running take after take, up and down those steps. I was actually very surprised at Heath’s athleticism while singing because, yes, that was him singing. Like, of course he could freaking sing too, right? He could wear green leather pants and sing!”

Buena Vista Pictures / Everett Collection

Since George’s aunt is singer Rosemary Clooney, everyone working on the movie assumed he could sing too. George, who knew he wasn’t the best singer, wanted to have a little fun with the producers. He joked, “They played it back and were hoping that if I heard it, I’d know it was terrible. It sounded like a cat being run over by a semi, but I wanted them to suffer a little more, so I said it was great.” After telling them that he was totally fine with lip-synching, Dan Tyminski was hired to provide vocals.

Buena Vista Pictures / Courtesy Everett Collection

9. Did sing: Having grown up playing music with several bands, Oscar Isaac actually sang for his role in Inside Llewyn Davis.

CBS Films/Everett Collection

He even wrote a song for the movie, and shared, “I’ve been playing and writing music my whole life and thought that I would love to take on the challenge of creating a song that we can use for the movie. So I wrote a song called ‘Never Had,’ and he loved it, and I ended up performing the song live in the movie.”

Disney Channel / Everett Collection

Drew originally auditioned to play Troy in the movie and even cowrote “Get’cha Head in the Game.” Zac shared that he was blindsided when his voice wasn’t fully featured and was actually replaced with Drew’s during post-production. He said, “In the first movie, after everything was recorded, my voice was not on them. I was not really given an explanation. It just kind of happened that way. Unfortunately, it put me in an awkward position. It’s not something I expected to be addressed. Then High School Musical blew up”

Tim Mosenfelder / Getty Images

11. Did sing: Zac did, however, end up doing all of his own singing for High School Musical 2, High School Musical 3, Hairspray, and The Greatest Showman.

20th Century Fox / New Line Cinema / Everett Collection

Even Zendaya was blown away by how great he sounded on the track he recorded for The Greatest Showman. She said, “The whole time we were rehearsing he was like ‘You know, I’m just kinda rusty,’ and then I heard what he recorded. And I was like ‘Okay, Zac! Look at you! You were trying to hide it the whole time.'”

Universal /  Everett Collection

However, he played all of the piano throughout the movie and even got to play with Ray Charles himself before the movie was shot. Director Taylor Hackford revealed that Ray Charles was also very fond of Jamie. He said, “Ray’s not just testing him as a piano player, he’s testing him as a man. And finally, Jamie gets it. Ray stands up and hugs himself — he had a way of doing that when he got excited — and said, ‘The kid’s got it!’ I had cast Jamie as Ray Charles, but it was at that moment Ray anointed him. Jamie must’ve grown about 10 feet tall.”

Universal / Courtesy Everett Collection

13. Did sing: Taron Egerton sang “every note” while portraying Elton John in the movie Rocketman.

David Appleby / Paramount / Everett Collection

He even explained that since the world is so accustomed to Elton John’s voice, he didn’t feel like he needed to do a perfect imitation of it. He said, “It’s not intended to be a carbon copy performance of who Elton is. This was an enormous source of anxiety to me — I believed that it would work, but I wasn’t certain of it.” He even got a Grammy nomination for his singing in the movie.

BBC

14. Didn’t sing: Even though Viola Davis does actually sing one song, “These Dogs of Mine,” Maxayn Lewis provided all the rest of the vocals for Viola to lip-synch to in Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom.

Netflix / Everett Collection

Maxayn told Variety that before recording the music, she had to learn Viola’s cadence and breath control as Ma Rainey. She said, “Every inpidual has a cadence to their speech, how they talk and how they breathe, and Ms. Davis has that certain kind of cadence when she does a character. It is never the same, and that is the greatness of her. So, I listened to her cadence of how she was speaking as Ma, how she controlled her breath. I looked at how she moved her lips so I could nail it.”

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15. Did sing: Reese Witherspoon did all her own singing for Walk the Line and worked with voice coaches for about six months. Her performance as June Carter even earned her an Academy Award.

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She reminisced about the experience, saying, “Joaquin and the guys in the band practiced every day and every night. Despite all the practice, I was so nervous to sing in front of those huge crowds, but once we got started, it was such a thrill. Truly an unforgettable experience I will always cherish.”

United Artists / Courtesy Everett Collection

Marni Nixon was brought in to re-record the songs so Natalie could lip-synch. In Marni’s memoir, I Could Have Sung All Night, co-author Stephen Cole said, “Marni thought it was barbaric. Because Natalie was not good and everyone would tell her she was wonderful, she was fabulous, knowing that they would not be using her tracks.”

Courtesy Everett Collection

17. Did sing: Jamie Campbell Bower did all of his own singing for Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, which was also his film debut.

Dreamworks / Courtesy Everett Collection

He also became the lead singer for the band Counterfeit before their split in 2020. However, he still releases his own music, and his latest singles — “Run On” and “Devil in Me” — were just released May 27, the same day Stranger Things 4 dropped on Netflix and Jamie made his debut as 001.

Netflix / Everett Collection

She explained, “I was singing all the songs, and then David would lift bits of my performance. The bulk of the music was done by a Swedish singer, Molly Sandén. Our voices were quite similar. They did some fancy stuff in the studio and pulled it together that way, and then I sing the song that my character is composing.”

Netflix / Everett Collection

19. Did sing: Tom Cruise took voice lessons and did all of his own singing for Rock of Ages. And because he’s so dedicated to his roles, he would sing full out for “four or five hours per day.”

Warner Bros / Everett Collection

Director Adam Shankman was thrilled the first time he heard Tom sing. He said, “He sounded amazing. And within one lesson, his range broadened as he opened up. I opened the door, and I was like a 15-year-old girl, I was screaming and jumping up and down and going, ‘Oh my god this is going to work.’”

Picturehouse / ©Picturehouse/Courtesy Everett Collection

She told Graham Norton that she took voice lessons so she could really nail Édith Piaf’s singing technique — she wanted to make sure her tongue and lips were moving the same way Édith’s did.

BBC

21. Did sing: Tom Hiddleston did his own singing when he played Hank Williams in I Saw the Light, even though he’d never sung before in his life.

Sony Pictures / Everett Collection

Elizabeth Olsen, who played Audrey Mae Williams, did her own singing too!

Tom is naturally a baritone and Hank Williams was a tenor, so he had to train for months to be able to hit the higher notes. He said, “I had listened to ‘Love Sick Blues’ and to ‘Long Gone Lonesome Blues,’ and I didn’t know how to make my vocal cords vibrate to make that specific sound. … I thought it was an accident of genetics.”

20thcentfox / Courtesy Everett Collection

When he explained the dubbing process, he said, “It was very well done. The entrances and exits from the songs were my voice, and then they filled in — in those days, they were very fussy about matching voices in musicals.”

20thcentfox / Courtesy Everett Collection

23. And finally, did sing: Brie Larson actually covered “Black Sheep” when she played Envy Adams in Scott Pilgrim vs. the World.

Universal

Brie’s version of the song gained so much popularity that the song was finally made streamable in June 2021, along with the rest of the film’s expanded soundtrack. Brie even covered the song again on her YouTube Channel.

Brie Larson / youtube.com