The beginnings of Bowie’s acting career predate his commercial breakthrough as a musician. Studying avant-garde theatre and mime under Lindsay Kemp, he was given the role of Cloud in Kemp’s 1967 theatrical production Pierrot in Turquoise (later made into the 1970 television film The Looking Glass Murders). In the black-and-white short The Image from 1969, he played a ghostly boy who emerges from a troubled artist’s painting to haunt him. The film is one of the few short films ever to receive a certified ‘X’ Rating and it gained this rating due to its violent content.
