Ringo Starr

The acting career is a side effect of the drumming, and he has always seemed comfortable with that. Starr was playing with Rory Storm and the Hurricanes in Liverpool when the Beatles took him on in August 1962, and the job he did there is still argued about by people who ought to know better. He was a feel drummer rather than a technical one, and the parts he played are inseparable from the records. He sang roughly one lead vocal per album, Yellow Submarine and With a Little Help from My Friends among them, wrote Don't Pass Me By and Octopus's Garden, and is credited as co-writer on three more.

On screen he is the one the camera actually likes. A Hard Day's Night gives him the long solitary stretch where he wanders off with a camera, and he plays it with no trace of self-consciousness, which is much harder than it looks and which none of the other three could have carried. Help! uses the same quality more broadly and more loudly.

The acting list after that is a strange one. Emmanuel in Candy, the Pope in Lisztomania, Larry the Dwarf in 200 Motels, Atouk in Caveman, a comedy that hands him almost no dialogue and is funnier for it. He narrated The Point, then Thomas & Friends, then played Mr. Conductor in Shining Time Station, which is how a whole generation of children met him first. Nearly everything since has been documentary: The Last Waltz, Let It Be, The Beatles Anthology, Get Back, Eight Days a Week. He is a limited actor and an extremely good presence, and he has spent sixty years knowing the difference.