Wayne Newton

The screen work is a sideline. Newton has performed in Las Vegas since 1958 and headlined there since 1963, which means every film on this list was made between stage engagements by a man whose actual job was a showroom. Hollywood hired the persona rather than the range, and often did so with no disguise at all: he is billed as Wayne Newton in Vegas Vacation, courting Ellen Griswold with the practised warmth of someone who has done this in front of an audience most nights of his adult life, and he plays himself again in Smokin' Aces and on According to Jim.

The exception, and the reason this page exists, is Licence to Kill. As Professor Joe Butcher, a televangelist whose meditation network fronts a drug operation, Newton delivers the smoothest possible reading of the smarmiest possible material. He does not send it up. He uses exactly the voice he would use to sell a ballad, aimed at a phone bank of donations, and the effect is unpleasant in the best way, because the audience recognises the technique.

The rest is what Vegas billing gets you. Julian Grendel in The Adventures of Ford Fairlane, Weldon in the fight sequel Best of the Best 2, August Gurino in Night of the Running Man, and Jackie Chrome in The Dark Backward, a comedy far stranger than anything else here. Television mostly wanted him as a guest of honour: a role on the Vegas-set detective series Vega$, appearances on Switch and The Amazing Race, a seat in the crowd for Roy Orbison's black and white concert film, and voice work as Jimmy 10-Strings in Hoodwinked Too!