Beckham, Collymore and Pele: Six players who have gone from the football pitch to the silver screen

By Mirror Football in Mirror Football Blog

Published 10:43 26/07/11

Arsenal legend Ian Wright has joined the ranks of those footballers who have swapped the football pitch for the film set after he landed a role in new British film Gun of the Black Sun .

MirrorFootball's Tam Jackson takes a look at six other players who have made the leap.

1) Vinnie Jones
We begin with former Wimbledon hard man Jones who simply took his hard man persona from the football pitch and put it on screen. His ‘acting’ career began with Guy Richie’s British gangster flick Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels . He followed that up with Richie’s next film Snatch , playing very much the same role in each: the no-nonsense British nutcase.

Since then Vinnie has headed out to Hollywood and has been in X-Men: The Last Stand , Gone in 60 Seconds , Smokin’ Aces and Eurotrip . He also made two appearances in some rather more obscure movies, one a Kazakhstani film Eliminator and Hungarian film The Magic Boys.

Here's Vinnie in his first role, as Big Chris in Lock Stock. Warning! Contains bad language!

2) Eric Cantona
Next up is the enigmatic former Manchester United star who plays a hallucinatory version of himself in Ken Loach's Looking for Eric. Cantona's character appears to offer typically philosophical advice to depressed postman Eric Bishop, who idolises the old collar-tuner-upper.

3) Stan Collymore
Former Liverpool, Nottingham Forest and Leicester striker Collymore made the leap into the acting world by playing British footballer Kevin Franks in Sharon Stone sequel Basic Instinct 2: Risk Addiction. Luckily for Stan, the role wasn't too demanding, especially as his character came to a sticky end in the opening scene.

4) Frank Leboeuf
He won the World Cup but he's not winning any awards for his cinematic exploits yet. He's appeared in five films since he hung up his playing boots in 2005 and is currently in Hollywood filming Russian Mafia flick Ocean Hotel. Movie database website IMDB gives his 2008 film The Ball is Round a three out of 10 average rating. You can almost hear him cry: "I don't care, I won ze World Cup."

The Ball Is Round by moviestrailer

5) Pele, Bobby Moore, Mike Summerbee, Ossie Ardiles and Ipswich Town
Real life film stars Sylvester Stallone and Michael Caine were joined by real life footballers in this war-film caper where the Allies get to tackle Ze Nazis at football. Gloriously bonkers, especially the vertically challenged Sylvester Stallone playing the goalkeeper.

6) David Beckham
A host of top players including Alan Shearer, Zinedine Zidane and Raul made cameo appearances in this sugar-coated story of a poor boy from Mexico who made it big time with, er Newcastle United. As usual though, Becks stole the show.