Elton John Wants Justin Timberlake to Play Him in Biopic

Elton John performs at Forsyth Barr Stadium in Dunedin, New Zealand.

Teaukura Moetaua/Getty Images

Elton John says he has a first choice to play him in the planned biopic Rocketman: Justin Timberlake.

"He played me before in a David LaChappelle video of 'Rocket Man' and was superb," Sir Elton told the Los Angeles Times. Actually, the video Timberlake appeared in was for "This Train Don't Stop There Anymore," in which he portrayed a Rocket Man-era version of Elton John. (And was pretty convincing – check it out below.)

The film is "going to be a surreal look at my life, and not just a factual look at my life," says the singer, "more in the manner of a Moulin Rouge!" An announcement is forthcoming about will direct, he added. The Rocketman script is being written by Lee Hall, who wrote Billy Elliot; Sir Elton will produce.

In the meantime, HBO is set to air a documentary directed by Cameron Crowe on the making of The Union, the recent album collaboration between Elton and his musical idol, Leon Russell. Sir Elton plans to go into the studio for his own next album this month. 

Timberlake, meanwhile, has been linked to a potential role in the next Coen Brothers film, Inside Llewyn Davis, which is reportedly set in the Greenwich Village folk-music scene of the Sixties.   

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Song Stories

“Piano Man”

Billy Joel | 1973

Billy Joel’s first hit, “Piano Man,” was – ironically – an autobiographical lament about how his first album wasn’t a hit. When Cold Spring Harbor didn’t take off, Joel briefly became a lounge pianist in Los Angeles, and this song, about that experience, expressed his frustrations and fears at the time: “And they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar/And say, ‘Man, what are you doing here?’” “It was all right,” Joel said later, about the gig. “I got free drinks and union scale, which was the first steady money I’d made in a long time.”

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